I recently finished reading, after a very long hiatus, Phantastes by George Macdonald. It was not, for my tastes, the best. The long break corresponded to the point where I threw the book down in consternation at the latest rabbit trail. There is a very loose thread of a plot, and if there is any underlying reason or rational for the series of unfinished adventures the narrator suffers, God knows, which is sort of the point of the book.
The narrator is not having a good time either, but in the end, he has the courage to hope that something good is coming.
In all, there were many beautiful parts to this mosaic; and if I found the whole to be incomprehensible, certain parts were quite dear. Imaginative through and through, I wish this were better than it is, or perhaps I’m really wishing it was something other than what it was.
Tale Told 