dichroic | it’s a cup of tea, but not quite my cup of tea (book impression: The Magicians)

First, my nephew is doing well. I’m pondering a nom for him here, even though I did mention that his name is Hunter, since someday he’ll be old enough to care about privacy; there are so many choices! Some are a bit silly; possibilities are Orion (a play on his name), MacDuff (because he was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d), or even Wheatfish (he was supposed to be born during the Hunter’s Moon, but instead he was born during August, the month of the Grain Moon or Sturgeon Moon, depending where you look. Anyway, on to the book.

It may be too easy to summarize Lev Grossman’s The Magicians as Richard Papen goes to Hogwarts, but that doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate. (Richard Papen is the hero of Donna Tartt’s A Secret History The fact that I had to Google to find his name because I couldn’t remember it at all probably tells you most of what you need to know about my reaction to A Secret History.) I love the idea and the setting and the description of the characters in this book enough to keep reading it, but Quentin, the hero, is bloodless enough that I can’t get totally immersed in him.

By the way, I am calling this a book impression rather than a review because I’m only about a quarter of the way through as I’m writing it. So far it’s drawing me on despite my finding Quentin off-putting.

It’s as if there’s an archetype in fiction, a self-absorbed type who seems to be lacking a certain sap. Milo at the beginning of The Phantom Tollbooth might be one, but that whole book is about pulling him out of it. Something slightly similar happens to Eustace in The Dawn Treader, though there he’s also more of a jerk to start with. Holden Caulfield is one. All of the characters in A Secret History are, and so are the ones in A.S. Byatt’s Possession. (Maybe that’s why Byatt hated Harry Potter so much; whatever Harry lacks, it isn’t blood.

I’m not sure what produces that effect on me; it’s in a limited subjective third-person point of view (that is, we can see inside Quentin’s head but no one else’s), but so are lots of things including HP. It may be partly because so much of it happens inside Quentin’s head without direct interaction with the outside world, as it does in Holden Caulfield’s; in other words, it has to be telling rather than showing because there’s often not much to show. It’s going to be interesting to see if I have the same impression at the end.

On the other hand, at least it’s clear from what I’ve read about this book and the sequel that no one will be forced to forget about magic or have it leave the world at the end. That’s always worth something.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.