SOURCE: Williams, Terry Tempest. “The Bible as Radical Diet Plan.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (20 March 1994): 8.

In the following review, Williams offers a generally positive assessment of Millroy the Magician, but finds the novel's imagery and style overbearing.

“My name is Millroy and I am a messenger,” he said.

He leaned his wide bright face into the bigness of the TV screen.

“I was once so fat I was imprisoned in the darkness of my body—trapped in my own fatness. Every day was a living hell, and I suffered just like you. But the Lord spoke to me saying, ‘Change your ways, Fatso!’”

So begins one of Millroy the Magician's evangelical diatribes in Paul Theroux's new novel [Millroy the Magician]. This is a book about food, religion and the manipulation of power in America. It is not altogether appetizing.

In Theroux's classic novel, The Mosquito Coast, Allie...