Review: The Magicians

The Magicians

By Lev Grossman

Viking 2009

402 pages

From my to-be-read shelf

Quentin Coldwater should be a happy kid. But he is waiting for something big to happen, something that will make his rather ordinary life extraordinary. So as he waits to finish high school and go to Princeton, he learns magic tricks and rereads his favorite childhood books that take him to the magic land of Fillory. When he travels through a portal to Brakebills, a college for the study of magic, he thinks that life is finally about to get good. But magic doesn't solve every problem and sometimes, it creates new ones.

Many people claim that this book is a darker, more grown-up Harry Potter. But for me, they just happen to be two books that involve young magicians. I think the difference is that Harry Potter is about a fight between good and evil. The lines are clearly delineated (well, maybe not for you, Snape) and you know that good must prevail regardless of the cost. In The Magicians, everything is grey. Normal people and magical people have faults and make mistakes and don't know who they are supposed to be or what will make them content with their lives. The contrast is really strong between the ambiguity of Quentin's life and the way he perceives the characters in Fillory to be good or bad.

While this book may seem to be specifically for and about college-aged readers, I think there is something very universal in Quentin's expectations and experiences. Each one of us believe that we would be happy if - if we got a promotion, lost 20 pounds, got married, or got our book published. All magic aside, this is Quentin's realization that the things he thought would make him happy - magic, love, Fillory itself - are not enough to make him content with his life.

"Here he was, a freshly licensed and bonded and accredited magician. He had learned to cast spells, seen the Beast and lived, flown to Antarctica on his own two wings, and returned naked by the sheer force of his magical will. He had an iron demon in his back. Who would ever have thought he could do and have and be all those things and still feel nothing at all? What was he missing? Or was it him? If he wasn't happy even here, even now, did the flaw lie in him? As soon as he seized happiness it dispersed and reappeared somewhere else. Like Fillory, like everything good, it never lasted. What a terrible thing to know."

Mr. Grossman is obviously paying a thinly veiled and very loving homage to the land of Narnia and its creator, C.S. Lewis. Fillory is a magical land inhabited by magical creatures which is often rescued by a group of siblings who are summoned when there is trouble and sent back home when peace reigns again. As someone who loves those books, I really enjoyed this and can imagine myself going back through the book again to discover more of the allusions to Narnia.

I found this book to drag and be uneven in some places, but ultimately I thought it was an excellent look at the way the things we think will save us can actually damage us instead. I appreciated the way that magic did not fix all problems - magic is hard to learn, hard to practice, and creates its own special class of problems. And yet we are still captivated by magic. C.S Lewis was, Lev Grossman is, and we are as we continue to read books and watch movies where the characters can do things we can only imagine. I will definitely be picking up the second book to find out what happens to Quentin and Fillory. 

Wednesdays with David: Party Time!

Sorry friends, there is no Wednesdays with David today. We didn't do much reading. Instead, we spent most of the day celebrating the most excellent 86th birthday of my grammy/David's Gigi (aka great-grandma). We partook in swimming (David) and mudslides (Mommy) and had lots of fun with our family.

Dear Grammy/Gigi, Happy Birthday. We love you very much.

When Grammy met David....

Review: The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller

The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller

By Henry James

Lancer Books 1968

284 pages

Won from Allie at A Literary Odyssey

The Turn of the Screw

I wasn't sure how I would react to this famous ghost story. I don't do scary very often or very well and so I purposely started out reading this story only during daylight hours. I found that, although it was extremely atmospheric, I wasn't as freaked out as I had worried I might be.

The story begins with a man proposing to read a ghost story that was entrusted to him by a young woman. There is great dramatic tension leading up to the actual reading of the tale but once you get into it, you may forget completely about the group of characters experiencing the story along with you. A governess gets her first job and meets with her new boss. He is the uncle of two young children and our narrator is sent to the mansion to take care of the girl and then her brother when he is expelled from school. As she gets to know the angelic children, she begins to see strange figures around the grounds and the house. She becomes convinced that they are the spirits of the former groundskeeper and the former governess, both of whom have a malevolent pull on her innocent charges. 

I have to confess that I didn't love this story. I think James did an excellent job of really creating the atmosphere. You understand just how big and isolated this huge house and its occupants are. That being said, I failed to really feel any human connection between the governess and the children or the governess and the housekeeper, who is the only other character in the story. I couldn't understand why she didn't just leave (with or without her charges). I really felt the similarities between this story and Jane Eyre, which I listened to last month. I felt like I had already read a story about a creepy house, an angelic student, and a distant (yet very desirable) employer. 

The major point of contention for those who read this story is the line between reality and imagination. Many critics claim that what the governess sees is all in her head as the result of being unable to cope with the isolation. Others claim that the ghosts are real and that this story is about the loss of innocence as she pines for her employer and her young charges stand on the edge of adolescence. I think the best thing about this story is that you may never be able to answer this question. 

Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller is not a scary story (unless you are frightened by American girls who seems to lack manners!). The novel centers around Winterbourne, a privileged American man vacationing in Geneva and Rome who encounters a rude young boy and his older sister Daisy. Daisy and Winterbourne begin a complicated series of flirtations, where she tempts him to take her to the Roman ruins without a chaperone and dangles an Italian man in his face in order to make him jealous. Winterbourne's family and acquaintances are shocked at Daisy's behavior and urge him to leave her alone. But he can't help falling for her charms.

In this story, Henry James again succeeds brilliantly at not telling you quite what is going on. Because this story is told from Winterbourne's point of view, we never know if Daisy is intentionally acting like a hussy or if she is just a free spirit who is so naive that she does not realize she is breaking all rules of social decorum. This is a brilliant character study of both Daisy and Winterbourne. 

This story is quick read and I think it is fascinating to read it as a woman in the 21st century, who has to worry about so few of the social restrictions that are imposed upon Daisy and the women of her time. It will either make you feel very lucky to be living when you do or make you angry that a time existed when women were restricted and judged  in this way. 

What is your favorite Henry James novel or short story??

It's Monday and I'm back!

Hello, literary people! Sorry I'm posting this a bit late. I made a quick jaunt out of state this weekend, but I am back home in NJ (which greeted me with a torrential rain storm, by the way). I had a really good week for reading, though! This probably means that I should pay some more attention to cleaning my house or doing the laundry this week...

Read This Week:

The Magicians

By Lev Grossman

Code Name Verity

By Elizabeth Wein

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

By Ayelet Waldman

The Unlikely Disciple:

A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

By Kevin Roose


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Wednesdays with David: You Can't Go to School Naked!
Reviews of The Cruise of the Rolling Junk and Russian Winter


Reading Now:

The Eyre Affair
By Jasper Fforde

Up Next:

The Chosen
By Chaim Potok


What book(s) are you excited about this week?

Review: Russian Winter

Russian Winter

By Daphne Kalotay

Arrow Books 2012
459 pages

Won from Kristin at Always with a Book

Nina Revskaya is a reclusive former Russian ballerina living in Boston. When she decides to auction off her expansive jewelry collection, she does not anticipate that it will open the door to her past. Drew Brooks, her contact at the auction house, feels like there is more to the story of the jewels than Nina is revealing. When she meets Grigori Solodin, a professor with a unique connection to Nina, the two are determined to find out the truth about the Revskaya jewels and Nina’s mysterious past.

Russian Winter sucks you in and does not let you go. The narrative switches between the present day where Nina is reticent to reveal anything to Drew or Grigori and the past, as Nina starts in ballet school and works her way through the ranks to become “The Butterfly,” the star of the Bolshoi Ballet. Ms. Kolotay is superbly skilled at making the reader feel as if they actually are in the different places, watching the stories unfold. She weaves fact with narrative, so that the reader feels like they have learned about Stalinist Russia, ballet, literature, and jewels without having to crack a textbook. But this doesn’t mean her writing is dry; rather it is nuanced and beautiful.

“And though she knew that the stories had been written in another time, Drew felt she understood the confused schoolteachers and reluctantly betrothed daughters, the aging widowers and poor farmhands, whose main misfortune was simply to be human – to fall in and out of love, to grow old or die young. She had been reading one or two stories each night before bed and, when she at last closed her eyes, felt she had been there with those people and suffered their small agonies.”

One of the things I found most fascinating was the way Kalotay depicts life in Communist Russia. There are a great many things that Nina and her friends are shielded from with their privileged lives as artists. But the threat of the Stalinist government constantly hangs over the characters. Artists are placed on various levels, which indicated their compliance with the rules and how much they are favored by the government. There is a constant fear of creating or performing art that will be seen as anti-government or that your words and actions will be reported by someone you trusted. Despite this, Nina and many of the other characters are artists and their dedication to their craft is evident on every page.

You know it’s a good read when you come to the end and you are disappointed that it is over. I wanted to spend more time with Nina, Grigori, and Drew and find out more about their pasts and their futures.  This novel has so many good things within its pages – wonderful characters, strong research, a mystery, and really beautiful writing. Daphne Kalotay is a very talented writer and Russian Winter is not to be missed. 

Review: The Cruise of the Rolling Junk

The Cruise of the Rolling Junk

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hesperus Press November 2011

92 pages

A birthday gift

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am doing an abysmal job of reading and reviewing something by F. Scott each month. My last post on Francis is from March and I am appropriately ashamed. So today we will look at The Cruise of the Rolling Junk and soon we will look at Tales of the Jazz Age, a collection of short stories. Next month, I will be (re) reading The Great Gatsby. I would love for you to join me!

The Cruise of the Rolling Junk is a recent release of Fitzgerald's articles detailing the adventure that he and his wife Zelda had on the way to visit her parents. The duo set out from Connecticut to drive to Zelda's childhood home in Alabama in a car they dubbed 'the rolling junk.' 

Shortly after the publication of The Beautiful and the Damned, Fitzgerald wrote  about their trip with the hope of making some quick money from a major magazine. Unfortunately, the only magazine that would accept his travelogue was Motor magazine. For a few hundred dollars, Fitzgerald's account appeared in three installments in 1924.

Although this is a very quick read, I found it incredibly indicative of Fitzgerald's style as a writer. While this purports to be a true retelling of their trip, we know that there are several key issues which are misrepresented, or lied about. This is the fascinating thing about this writer, though. His fiction has many shades of truth and his supposed non-fiction has the flair for the dramatic which inspires Fitzgerald to make their story better (even if it is untrue). 

There are also many things the reader can take from this slim book about  Fitzgerald as a person. We get an intimate look at the relationship of F. Scott and Zelda - the way they fought, the way they constantly tried to triumph over the other in wit or humor, and the way alcohol and money figured heavily into their ups and downs as a couple.

Through the eyes of our intrepid travelers, we view a country that is still healing from war and is riddled with racism. Zelda is deeply grieved by the ways her beloved South has changed since she was a young girl living there and enjoying 'peaches and biscuits.' F. Scott is incredibly uncomfortable when he has to stop in a black town in order to get some gas and wishes he had purchased a gun. While such overt racism is difficult to stomach today, our author is certainly not alone in his feelings in the 1920s. 

There is a comedy of errors feel throughout this book - the ways in which the car breaks down, the irresponsible spending of money, the finding of more money, and the final stroke of bad fortune (spoiler!) when it is revealed that Zelda's parents are not at home to receive them! It is fun to read, but what makes it excellent is that the humor is only thinly obscuring the real issues for both the Fitzgeralds and the country at large.

If you are a newbie to the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, this is a great way to dip your toe into the waters in less than 100 pages. If you are a lover of his remarkable stories, you will want to add this one to your shelf as perhaps the last piece of newly released writing we will ever have from a very talented writer.

Wednesdays with David:You Can't Go to School Naked!

You Can't Go to School Naked!

By Diane Billstrom

Illustrated by Don Kilpatrick III

Putnam June 2008

Read on We Give Books

The story: A little boy decides that he will no longer be wearing clothes to school. His parents attempt to change his mind with the thought of various sticky, smelly, yucky disasters that could befall him if he goes to school sans clothes. Can they convince him to wear clothes to school the next day?

Mama opines: We read this book at We Give Books, which is a fantastic program that donates a book to a literacy cause for every book you read on the computer with your little one. You Can't Go to School Naked will surely induce giggles from your child as our protagonist and his parents imagine all of the funny and uncomfortable things that could happen if he goes to school naked. The rhyming scheme reminds me a bit of Dr. Seuss and the illustrations are charming.

Thoughts from David: I like it because well, it’s silly. It’s funny to go to school without underwear!

Favorite part: I don't have a favorite part. I like it all! 

Stay cool today and happy reading!