One could summarize The Magicians as follows: it is a coming of age novel in which a boy discovers the magical lands he read about and longed for as a child are real. This assessment would certainly be true, but it would also do a grave injustice to this complex and compelling novel.
Grossman’s book is, indeed, a coming of age story. It explores the delight, depravity, and despair of teens struggling to come to terms with the world and with themselves. And I really do mean explores. Grossman does not toss such themes in lightly, but delves deeply, weaving into the very bones of the plot alienation, dis-affectation, young love, sex, jealousy, and the contradiction of one’s hopes for the future with the often less-than-satisfying reality of that future.
The Magicians is also, indeed, about the protagonist’s discovery that a seemingly fictional land called Fillory (clearly modeled on Narnia) is a real place. Not just real, but Real. As in filled with many dark and terrible things not spoken of in the dog-eared pages of the novels he loved as a child. As in another parable for casting off the silly, golden-tinged dreams of youth and replacing them with the more nuanced and treacherous realities of adulthood.
The story follows Quentin Coldwater, a young man who, when preparing to depart Brooklyn for college, finds himself instead transported to a secret school for magic. Always feeling that he was destined for a future less mundane than the Ivy League, Quentin quickly embraces his new situation, discovering his power, making clever new friends, and falling in love. All in Quentin’s life, however, is not roses. One thing The Magicians does extremely well is face head on the fact that new circumstances will not change who a person fundamentally is. And Quentin is fundamentally unhappy, always feeling as if the now is not enough, as if something is missing.
The plot soon takes a darker turn, and I will not spoil it’s many twisting and satisfying turns by recounting them here. Suffice it to say, the real magic of The Magicians is not it’s central conceit, nor its realistic characters, nor its clever upending of canonical fiction, such as the Chronicles of Naria or Harry Potter. The magic of The Magicians is Grossman’s truly masterful plotting. Every piece of the tale, no matter how trivial it may seem when first related, clicks into place by the end of the novel, creating (as if bewitched by a spell) a brilliant narrative structure.
Truly, what Grossman has created here is masterful. Dark, sometimes ugly, and often uncomfortable. But masterful nonetheless.
I normally don’t negatively comment on books and book reviews, but I make an exception for THE MAGICIANS. I feel the physical need to warn others about this book, especially when I see a glowing review, because I was taken in by them, not warned about what to really expect.
I truly don’t get how anyone enjoyed this book. I know a lot of people who did, but I just don’t get it. The whole book can be summed up this way: If you are a whiny, unhappy person, magic will not change that … it’ll just turn you into a whiny, unhappy person who can do magic.
If you want to read a book with a whiny, unhappy protagonist, then this is the book for you. For one thing, Quentin’s life *is* roses. He doesn’t have a bad life. It’s all rather good, in fact … except that he continues to be unsatisfied. By the time (well into the book) when anything interesting happens from a plot standpoint, I was so utterly disgusted with the main character that it was painful to continue reading. Still, I hoped that he would change and become more compelling … but he really never did.
This angst-filled approach is the only original thing about the novel, and it’s original in an unenjoyable way. Every other aspect of the novel is explicitly based on other classical fiction – most notably Narnia and Harry Potter, but with other callouts thrown in.
I totally agree with Andrew! I’m about halfway through the book, and trying to convince myself it’s worth it to even continue reading. The book itself might be more interesting to someone who has never read Harry Potter or Narnia, but I am getting very frustrated with all the referrals and similarities to other books. It’s as if the author (Lev Grossman) has no imagination of his own and was forced to steal ideas from existing literature. I have also noticed dozens of areas already that are either missing commas, or commas are misplaced…. I find myself re-reading sections to figure out which words are supposed to be emphasized in which ways. Very frustrating! Although I’m halfway through the book, I feel that very little has happened since Quentin started at Brakebills, aside from lots of alcohol consumption and hand cramps! I really don’t understand how so many found this book suspenseful! Thank goodness I got it from my library rather than buying it!!!
I normally wouldn’t bother doing this, but I feel like someone has to step up for Grossman.
To start, it’s well written. No matter what others may complain about, anyone who has read a lot can tell good prose from trash, and this isn’t trash.
The characters are deep and multidimensional. They are all very believable (whether you like them or not), and feel like real people, not what people ought to be when they discover they have magical powers.
That, I think, is a key trait to this book. Most think that because a character has magic, they should be off going on adventures, making the world a better place, and all around doing amazing things. Grossman doesn’t do that. He makes characters like most people would be if they had magic. More or less the same. They still have the same faults, work ethics, and social inhibitions. They are more likely to act like normal twenty-one year olds and go out drinking than to go around saving the planet. They retain the human tendency to never be satisfied with what they have (the main character in particular suffers from this).
These are still real people, and real people don’t always go flying off to the nearest adventure. Adventure does eventually find them, but this is a story about people as much as it is about magic.
If you read books from other genres where a prerequisite isn’t for something to be blowing up or being wonderfully magical in every scene, you may really enjoy this. I think the key reason people dislike it is because they were focusing too much on the magic. This book is NOT Harry Potter. it will not always give you that feeling of bewilderment and wonder (though it sometimes will). Neither will it always give you a strong, honorable main character that you can comfortably share a conscious with. Not every scene will be an adrenaline spiking life or death situation.
If you can live with that, I wholeheartedly recommend The Magicians as your next read. Its the best book I’ve read in a long while.