SOURCE: Kennedy, Douglas. “Regular Guy.” New Statesman & Society 6, no. 273 (8 October 1993): 38.

In the following review, Kennedy offers a positive assessment of Millroy the Magician.

“My name is Millroy and I am a messenger. I was once so fat I was imprisoned in the darkness of my body—trapped in my own fatness. Every day was living hell, and I suffered just like you. But the Lord spoke to me saying, ‘Change your ways, fatso!’ I was reborn and assumed the shape of this body you see before you.”

To anyone familiar with the bizarre frontiers of born-again American Christianity, this “testimonial” from Paul Theroux's terrific new novel, Millroy the Magician, probably sounds like some absurd parody of televangelistic hard-sell. After all, though the Jimmy Swaggerts and Jim Bakkers promised anyone two box seats in heaven in exchange for cold cash, they surely didn't offer their flock divine intervention when...