SOURCE: Flower, Dean. “Impersonations.” Hudson Review 46, no. 3 (autumn 1994): 495–502.

In the following excerpt, Flower offers a mixed assessment of Millroy the Magician, citing shortcomings in the passive characterization of Jilly.

[John Gregory] Brown is not the only male writer these days to adopt a female narrator; William Boyd in Brazzaville Beach and Norman Rush in Mating have provided influential examples, and now Paul Theroux has done it too. He impersonates a fourteen-year-old girl in his latest novel [Millroy the Magician], and more than gets away with it. She is a scruffy undersized kid named Jilly Farina, living in poverty with a drunken father. Along comes Millroy the Magician, a middle-aged carnival veteran whose magic is really magic, to Jilly, and her innocence is just what his faltering ego needs. He virtually steals her away, but Jilly is glad to become whatever he likes—acolyte, best audience, alter ego, even...