A Double Story

George MacDonald

And that is all my double story. How double it is, if you care to know you must find out. If you think it is not finished--I never knew a story that was. I could tell you a great deal more concerning them all, but I have already told more than is good for those who read but with their foreheads, and enough for those whom it has made look a little solemn, and sigh as they close the book.

This story, a true fantasy in the old sense, is possibly the best book I have read so far this year. MacDonald does not bother with the petty details which so often clog up modern fantasy, rather using the freedom which the genre can grant to develop an incredible study of human nature. A Double Story may leave some people wishing that MacDonald had written a sequel--it does break off at a seemingly odd point--but if you pay attention this, too, is only most fitting.
A Double Story border on psychological fantasy, taking you around the back way of thinking about the human mind. MacDonald's conceptions of our own foibles (especially in interactions between people) are clean cut and often caught me off guard. However you want to look at it, A Double Story is something which ought to ensure you are not the same person sitting down with it as you are rising.