Lev has an interview about The Magicians over at the wizards.com.
The Book Club selection for March and April is Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (2009)!
Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.
SPOILERS AHEAD
This book has been selected as the March/April 2011 GWC Book Club choice - please continue discussion (and interesting linkage) in the discussion thread here.
These were noted in the nomination thread, but in case you missed it there’s a review at The Millions that does a nice summary of the Potter parallels. There’s also an interview at Wizards of the Coast that looks at the magic system used in general.
I really enjoyed this book. The mix of Harry Potter/Narnia on an adult level was refreshing, or at least for me. I’ll have to flip through it again, but I hope everyone finds it enjoyable as much as I did.
I just picked up a copy of this earlier this afternoon… I’m looking forward to checking it out.
Pike, it had better not let me down!
I am just starting and am seeing the Harry Potter/Narnia references. What is interesting is how Grossman is trying to capture a realistic aura of practicality in this story, leading me to think he’s not really telling a magical story but a exploring something else.
Hrm. I think I agree, but I’m curious to hear your take on it.
I am very close to the end. They are now in Fillory and getting bored. At this juncture, I notice a very drastic change in approach by Grossman. In Parts 1 and 2, it feels like he trying to merge fantasy and reality together. Taking the Narnia and Hogwarts mythologies and showing inpracticalities while using these same fantasies as the drive for Quintin and the others to become magicians. It teases what the outside world is like, but sheltering us in a way. But also structurally speaking, it feels very character-driven, like Grossman along with his characters are not so sure how school is going to end.
Then in Parts 3 and 4 (at least what I have read so far), there is a major shift. Characters are aimless and have now been forced to move on through a plot-driven event. They have lost their individuality in order to play roles in the quest. And the quest itself doesn’t feel like a critisism of fantasy storytelling or even a parody, but a flat-out ridicule of the genre and those who enjoy it. I won’t expand on that part until I’m finished in case there is a turn I’m just not seeing yet.
Okay. Finished. My opinion aside, Grossman leaves me confused as what his opinion or the opinion his book has on fantasy literature in general. A lot of this book leads me to think that if he doesn’t have a problem with fantasy so to say, he does have a problem with people holding on to fantasy past puberty. My opinion of the themes in this book is that magic represents immaturity. Those who hold onto magical thinking are usually recluses and emotionally stunted individuals who can’t get past the facts of reality or who don’t much care for it. It’s clear that Grossman has singled out Narnia content-wise and Harry Potter structuraly-speaking as the main culprits of this stunted literary growth, with a slight tip of the hat to Tolkien.
I have read reviews that have seen this as a grown-up fantasy when it in fact is anti-fantasy inside a fantasy casing. There is no comfort found in magic in how Grossman writes it. He wants his readers to come away disturbed by it while ultimately claiming those who partake in the enjoyment of fantasy is akin to an addiction.
The funny thing about Grossman’s reality is that he doesn’t explain in detail how a world can be built around magic (probably as a means to portray it as having no real purpose after learning it). It leads me to think that the real question of the book is this: what is more important, having purpose or having luxury?
Waited until you finished to comment, because I was curious where you’d end up. I’d say you’re close. Grossman is interested in following children’s fantasy beyond childhood. He definitely doesn’t have a problem with holding onto fantasy past puberty, though. (He’s a fan of Potter, in fact his twitter ID is @Leverus.)
That’s kind of what I got out of the end. You’re a magician. You can do fantastic things. Now what?
His sequel is coming out soon (August 9th to be exact.) It’ll be interesting to see where he takes it from here.
(Disclaimer: I’m internet-friendly with Lev, and took him out for a drink after a signing once. Oddly, we talked mostly about Time.com.)
I might have put more emphasis on Grossman’s own views about magic than I should, but there is no denying that the biik itself sees magic and magical thinking rather negatively. SPOILERS AHEAD. The book uses Quentin as the protagonist as he is the student who believes in magic the most. He is also easily the most childish and ungrateful student at Breakbills, which is saying a lot. All the students are stunted emotionally. I first took this as usual alienated youth, but then I realized that the closest character we get to normal is Alice, who was rejected to begin with. We get a sense that the more powerful students were the ones who couldn’t break from childhood beliefs of magic. those who wanted to live in Fillory/Hogwarts/et al. Look at Alice’s parents and any other adult in the magical world, and especially Dean Fogg’s last lecture.
When we actually get to Fillory, the book leans toward (and I feel slightly overreaches) into mockery as we meet the Bear and the tree. Perhaps Grossman thinks he’s trying really consider what real bears and trees talk about, but it is disjointed with the rest of the story. The kids get the quest they yearn for and it immediately tries to rationalize the irrational. Were those guards working for The Beast or protecting the Ram? If they work for the Beast, why wasn’t the Ram dead long ago? If they are protecting him, why attack loyal subjects? The Beast honetly felt like a Scooby-Doo reject, meant to be a red herring.
But let’s assume that the focus is not on the world, but Quentin. He doesn’t grow as a person at Breakbills snd starts to devolve afterwards. When he finally seems to make peace with magic and even respect it, he throws it away. He honestly feels like magic cannot be controled without maturity but those who yearn for magic are immature to begin with. But like a drug, when his friends come back with a rather weak song and dance, he embraces it against what he believes is right.
I’m not sure it’s negatively, but it’s not unadulterated awesomesauce.
When we actually get to Fillory, the book leans toward (and I feel slightly overreaches) into mockery as we meet the Bear and the tree. Perhaps Grossman thinks he’s trying really consider what real bears and trees talk about, but it is disjointed with the rest of the story. The kids get the quest they yearn for and it immediately tries to rationalize the irrational.
Yeah, that’s an odd part. I think it’s a meditation on the weird creature that pop up in these kinds of fantasies. What kind of lives do they live otherwise? Hopefully, that’ll be revisited.
But let’s assume that the focus is not on the world, but Quentin. He doesn’t grow as a person at Breakbills snd starts to devolve afterwards.
That strikes me more as a comment on Quentin as a person (he’s sort of an anti-hero) and humanity in general.
I’m curious to see where he goes in the next installment. I understand that the secondary characters (well, one at least) will have some time to shine.
I finished The Magicians a few days ago. It was a good read, though something like The City & The City or Left Hand of Darkness is more to my taste.
I liked that Quentin was unlikeable, and that magic is dangerous. I like that actions have consequences, and that our characters can have bad things happen to them. I was hoping for something a bit more existential than the missing brother as the Beast, though. And I’m still curious as to what Quentin’s Discipline would have been.
I have to agree with Pike, though, in that I don’t think that magic is in and of itself negative in the novel - it’s what humanity does with magic that can have such negative repercussions.
I’d have to disagree with you about this book being a condemnation of non-juveniles who enjoy fantasy literature. I see the connection you make between emotional angst/depression/ennui and magic, but that appears to be part of where the power to perform magic comes from, the mechanics of it.
The distinction between magic and fantasy, for me, is that the novel itself is a fantasy, and magic is the means by which our characters, who are conscientious of a Narnia-like narrative in Fillory, try to control the world around them. Just because we have characters that aren’t the typical flawless knights-in-shining-armor, I don’t believe that the novel itself is criticizing those of us who enjoy reading stories in that mode. In a sense it’s quite meta, and conscientiously so; rather than showing a utopian world in which all is resolved, The Magicians shows us a world in which the desire for an utopic existence is never actually realized. Quentin wants Fillory, but in the end, it is a fantasy. However, in flying at the end, Quentin has emotionally healed enough in order to be open to the possibilities that such striving can offer. At least, that was my reading of it.
I’m quite interested to know more about what’s happened to Julia 
Just so. One of the things I found appealing was the search for metaphors when they were crafting new spells. In the end, they wind up borrowing a lot from D&D, which makes perfect sense but is also pretty arch.
Tor.com recently ran a review of The Magicians (in anticipation of the sequel, The Magician King.) I think it does a pretty good job of drawing out why it’s such a polarizing work.
SPOILERS (but if your reading a book review what do you expect)
Just finished the book a few days ago, certainly probably wouldn’t have picked up a copy of my own accord but i’m glad I did.
Grossman (or his publisher) has obviously done a good job in providing back story for this novel. While i was reading the book i looked up Fillory novels on my phone and believed they were real until I took a closer look after I finished the novel I realised that the following websites must exist to complement the Fillory backstory
http://christopherplover.com/
http://www.emberstomb.com/
This has somewhat skewed my feeling towards the book. Whilst reading it I felt that i was being left out slightly as Grossman obviously had a love for these books which I had not read. I felt that he was projecting his experience of reading this series through Quentin i.e. being engrossed in the magical world as a child reading the series and then as he matured perhaps found out things that he didnt like about the author which uncovered the nasty underbelly to Magic / Fiction just like Quentin begins to discover as he is actually in the Fillory world and realises that its not quite as nice as he would have thought.
That said after discovering that the Fillory books are not real I think that Grossman is trying to use the fictional Plover to highlight that magic and magical lands (fiction) can be created by people with flaws i.e. Quentin and Plover. Im not sure if im explaining this very well but I hope you get the point.
I liked the fact that although Quention is portrayed as the main character he isn’t nesscesarly the hero if indeed there is one in this story. I think i was always hoping that things would work out ok and Alice and Quention would get over things but realisticly glad that it didn’t turn out well because well life doesn’t when you are growing up and that’s how you learn things. Ok so not everyones Girlfriend turns into a niffin and the person they cheated on you with gets their hands cut off but I think there are parallels that can be drawn.
I dont know about anyone else but the neitherlands gave me the creeps for a while if there is any part of the scenery of the book i can imagine most vividly is this
Anyhow looking forward to The Magic King
The Magicians was almost greenlit by Fox for a pilot. There’s still some hope that a cable channel might give it a chance.