When a woman enters the life of a man content to live alone in a tin house on a barren plain, the prevailing wind is forever altered in Magnus Mills' modest fable, "Three To See the King" (Picador USA, 167 pages, $19).
But the plot is secondary.
Displaying a fertile imagination, Mills, whose first novel, "The Restraint of Beasts" (1998), was a Booker Prize finalist, provides a brief escape into a dreamlike world full of religious allegory and metaphors.
But this simpler world becomes just as problematic as any other, and the male-female dynamic is the first problem to blow in.
"So this is where you've been hiding," the woman says when she enters the nameless narrator's tin paradise.
Previously, the narrator was satisfied "doing little else, day and night" besides listening to the "infinite variations" of the wind.
But one of the woman's first complaints concerns the noise the wind makes.
"Later I came to understand that she was capable of enjoying my company and finding fault both at the same time, but in those first few days I wasn't sure what was going on," the narrator relates.
Eventually, Mary Petrie takes control of the dwelling, leading the narrator to remark that "a man remains master of his own home, so long as he observes all the rules."
One of those rules is imposed after the narrator's distant neighbors, who learn that a woman is living nearby, stop by for a visit.
At his friend's suggestion of someone living "further out" on their deserted landscape, the narrator recoils with irritation, and jealousy and curiosity enter.
Michael Hawkins is realizing the dream of the narrator by building a canyon for his and his followers' tin houses, a city of tin.
Soon, everyone is going to help Hawkins excavate his canyon, and the story's lesson becomes quite clear.
And that is the beginning of the end of this brief tale.
By the time it ends, though, Mills, a former London bus driver, has successfully moved the intricacies of human relationships and emotions to the barest of existences, laying out the pitfalls for all to see in a format that can be read in one sitting.
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