" 'This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!' thought Lucy, going still further in…"

Chapter 1, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," by C.S. Lewis

As a bookish child, I was enchanted by Narnia, the marvelous land discovered by little Lucy Pevensie when she pushed through the coats in a wardrobe to find a forest instead of a rear wall. Narnia was inhabited by fauns, dwarfs, talking beasts, a wicked witch and a great lion, Aslan, and the children who fell into it had grand adventures. For a long time, I always checked the backs of closets — just in case.

Author Laura Miller was another one who yearned to visit Narnia. Like others of us, she became "notorious at school for sneaking a library book into my lap during class and becoming so mesmerized by it that I wouldn't hear the teacher when she called my name." She knows the feeling of getting so far into an author's universe that it's a physical effort to emerge.

Eventually, all young devotees of C.S. Lewis' enchanted world discover both that you can get there only through books (and, to an extent now, video) and that the author was writing, in one sense, about Christianity.

Some of us are fine with the religious content. Others, like Miller, are not. Raised Roman Catholic but not interested in religion, she felt betrayed and turned away from Narnia for years. In "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia," she finally returns and makes her peace.

Along the way in this beautifully written book, Miller examines the story of Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis and the influences on his life and work, from his early family situation through his mature years. She looks at his attitudes toward women and other cultures honestly, considers the right order in which to read the Chronicles (in the order in which he wrote them), the problem of Susan Pevensie and why "The Last Battle" is the least satisfying of the seven books.

Lewis' emphasis on the importance of friendship is explored, along with his most famous chum, J.R.R. Tolkien. So are a lot of other pretty wonderful literary universes, including those of P.L. Travers' Mary Poppins, Lewis Carroll's Alice and Andrew Lang's color-coded "Fairy Books."

Miller gets, entirely, the magic of submerging oneself in a book and the difficulty of doing so once you understand more grown-up concepts, like literary criticism. Along the way, she visits with other fantasists, from Susanna Clarke ("Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell") to the anti-Lewis, Philip Pullman ("His Dark Materials"), and gathers their insights to add to her own.

Miller asserts that religious people are religious because they choose to be. I disagree with her; I think her gifts for empathy and insight haven't taken her quite far enough. But her calm, appreciative look at Narnia fills the gap between overemphatic proselytizers on both sides of the religious divide.

At first glance, "Magician's Book" seems a bit like an overgrown essay. In fact, the germ of it was a piece she wrote for Salon.com, of which she is a founder. The fascinating paths and byways she explores, however, make the meanderings of this journey entirely worthwhile, especially for all of us who ever longed to go still further in.

sbmiller@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8249