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A Novel
by Lev Grossman
Book Reviewed by:I loved every page of The Magicians. For anyone who grew up reading fantasy, who started with E. Nesbit or The Chronicles of Narnia or awaited each Harry Potter release, who openly or secretly continued to read fantasy as an adult, wondering if it was appropriate to still be drawn to tales of magic, this is a perfect read.
Five years ago Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke) brought magic and fairies to adult readers. The following year along came The Historian (Elizabeth Kostova), a great historical novel about Vlad, the vampire. Now, Lev Grossman brings modern magicians into a novel strictly for grownups.
Quentin Coldwater grew up in Brooklyn, gifted and always ahead of most kids his age. What else could he do besides go to Princeton and continue to be a great brain? What Quentin really wants, though, is happiness. While he found it as a youth in books of fantasy that took him away to imaginary worlds, he has never found it in life. His parents are just not that interested in him. Worse, his best friend got the girl Quentin loves. Though working hard at school has always paid off, "[he] was used to this anti-climatic feeling, where by the time you’ve done all the work to get something you don’t even want it anymore."
Luckily (or so he thinks), Quentin literally stumbles into Brakebills, an exclusive and highly secret academy for magicians, and is accepted after passing a grueling entrance exam. He finds friends and the love of his life, Alice, but more disturbingly he learns that he has power. In the way of coming of age stories, he must discover how to control that power and use it responsibly. Heartbreak, anxiety and wonder ensue.
Grossman makes Quentin’s years at Brakebills entertaining, using plenty of smart and funny nods to Hogwarts and the training of magicians, as well as references to magical occurrences found in books by authors from Ward Juster to Roger Zelazny. He even creates a fictional fantasy series, Fillory and Further (see sidebar), which all the students at Brakebills grew up reading.
The plot thickens and darkens after Quentin, Alice, and a few other friends graduate, only to find themselves adrift in New York City. Imagine yourself, or your son or your niece, heading out into life with a highly-skilled degree in something arcane and trying to figure out where to fit in. Grossman gets it just right.
Quentin is a complex character with unique abilities and fatal flaws. Alice, my favorite character, has deep reserves of strength and integrity. When they and their friends get the opportunity to prove themselves as magicians, it is the author’s mix of suspense, emotion and humor that propels an essentially disturbing tale. Whether the reader is 20, 40 or 60, the quandaries met and the choices made by these characters will feel real and important.
Lev Grossman writes in the voice of a clever 21st century man who has obviously thought deeply about the state of the modern world and pondered the age old question of whether it is possible to be happy. The result is a stirring investigation into the meaning and uses of magic told by a world-weary, fairly hip nerd.
This review was originally published in September 2009, and has been updated for the
May 2010 paperback release.
Click here to go to this issue.
Lev Grossman was born in 1969, the son of two English professors, and grew up in Lexington, MA, a placid little suburb of Boston. After obtaining a literature degree from Harvard and working towards a PhD in comparative literature at Yale, he gradually turned himself into a journalist and after a few years as a free-lancer, was hired by Time and became the magazine's book critic as well as one of its lead technology writers.
In 1997 Grossman published his first novel, Warp. It concerns the lyrical misadventures of a Boston slacker who has trouble distinguishing between reality and Star Trek.
Codex followed in 2004 and became a bestseller. It is a literary thriller in the tradition of The Name of the Rose, Possession and The Secret History. It's also an unusual love story, as well as a love letter to the mysteries and wonders of the Book, the death of which has been wildly exaggerated.
Lev grew up reading all the fantasy he could find and like other nerds, read and re-read his favorites over and over. For The Magicians, he employed his fantasy background and prodigious imagination to create a entire fantasy series, Fillory and Further. The series has never existed in the real world, is not available in bookstores or libraries, nor is its author Christopher Plover a real person. But the five books in the series and the characters in the books play large roles in The Magicians.
The Fillory and Further series consists of five volumes. Every summer the five Chatwin children enter a magical land called Fillory, which is ruled over by a pair of twin rams, Ember and Umber. In Fillory the Chatwins are treated as kings and queens, and time and again they rescue the creatures who live there from any threats that menace them, including the sinister witch known as the Watcherwoman.
The Five Books of Fillory:
The World in the Walls: Martin and Fiona have to stop the Watcherwoman from stopping time at 5:00 on a rainy September afternoon.
The Girl Who Told Time: Helen and Rupert are magicked into Fillory to help Martin and Fiona battle the Watcherwoman and hunt the mysterious Questing Beast.
The Flying Forest: Rupert and Fiona search for the source of a mysterious ticking sound that is troubling their friend Sir Hotspots, a noble leopard.
The Secret Sea: Set adrift on the Outer Ocean by the Watcherwoman, Rupert and Jane seek help to take them back to Fillory.
The Wandering Dune: Helen and Jane are carried by a sand dune out into the desert, where they discuss morality.
This review was originally published in September 2009, and has been updated for the
May 2010 paperback release.
Click here to go to this issue.
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