The Magicians
just finished reading this, about ten minutes ago. I was enthralled. i know, i know, many of the reviews moaned about the thin characterisation and squished-up plot, but i totally ate it up.
two things occurred to me while reading it: the first was, The Magicians reads almost exactly like Grossman has taken the Potter storyline and decided to completely invert it. so, everything that happens to Harry - exhilaration at being accepted to Hogwarts, dream come true etc, gentle romance, a meaningful quest to fight of the larger evil of Voldemort, faithful friends - it all seems as though Grossman has decided to fuck with it. what if magic was meaningless, or rather, what do you do when you are your own god? what if your friendships had the spikes of jealousy and faithlessness and genuine animosity that are more typical in the real world? what would normal teenagers do with that kind of power? - go motherfucking crazy, get completely debauched, of course. and so on. it's like he's taken the storyline, and at each fork in the road, he's decided to shoot off in the opposite direction to the one Rowling would have taken. i loved it. it reminded me of a story i read years ago, a parody fic called Chain-Smoking Harry, in tone sometimes, if not in content.
the second thing that occurred was, omg, this book really really reminds me of both Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History by Donna Tart. and then, bizarrely, i just checked out the interview grossman did with the Village Voice, and he actually listed those two books as primary influences in practically his first response. i feel entirely vindicated now.
seriously, it's a cool book.
two things occurred to me while reading it: the first was, The Magicians reads almost exactly like Grossman has taken the Potter storyline and decided to completely invert it. so, everything that happens to Harry - exhilaration at being accepted to Hogwarts, dream come true etc, gentle romance, a meaningful quest to fight of the larger evil of Voldemort, faithful friends - it all seems as though Grossman has decided to fuck with it. what if magic was meaningless, or rather, what do you do when you are your own god? what if your friendships had the spikes of jealousy and faithlessness and genuine animosity that are more typical in the real world? what would normal teenagers do with that kind of power? - go motherfucking crazy, get completely debauched, of course. and so on. it's like he's taken the storyline, and at each fork in the road, he's decided to shoot off in the opposite direction to the one Rowling would have taken. i loved it. it reminded me of a story i read years ago, a parody fic called Chain-Smoking Harry, in tone sometimes, if not in content.
the second thing that occurred was, omg, this book really really reminds me of both Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History by Donna Tart. and then, bizarrely, i just checked out the interview grossman did with the Village Voice, and he actually listed those two books as primary influences in practically his first response. i feel entirely vindicated now.
seriously, it's a cool book.