The Nail Guns Next Door

[nightdog_barks]

Because we had a huge hailstorm in the spring with golfball-sized hail, lots of folks in our area had to have their roofs replaced. Yesterday and today it was our next-door neighbor's turn. Tomorrow it will be OUR turn. :-P

I finished Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and, unlike so many of the people on Goodreads, I ... well, I loved it. I thought the story was engaging and I stayed up until almost 3 in the morning reading two nights in a row. I know the publisher apparently marketed it as "Harry Potter for grown-ups," but I'm one of the seven people on the planet who never read Harry Potter so I don't think I was coming to it with any real baggage. To me, there were echoes of Bret Easton Ellis (some people behave very badly in the book) and Ursula LeGuin, René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. (Not to mention our old friend, Donna Tartt.) There was a point in the book when I thought, "Oh my god these people are HORRIBLE and I hope something bad happens to them!", and another point when I breathed, "Oh, shit!" when something very bad did begin to happen. Yes, there are a couple of missteps by the author, including a moment when a minor Native American character is described as having a "hooked nose." It's perfectly plausible that someone who IS Native American could have the facial characteristic of a hooked nose, but ... um. Not a comfortable moment. I winced and shook my head, and kept reading. And now I'm ordering Grossman's next book in the trilogy.

So. Two thumbs up, a strong recommendation for a gritty, lyrical story with some deeply flawed characters struggling to figure out life, love, and the whole nine yards.

Comments

[felis]

"Oh my god these people are HORRIBLE and I hope something bad happens to them!"

I tried the first couple episodes of the TV show that was based on the book and as far as I remember, this was one of my main impressions? I dropped it pretty quickly because there wasn't anything that hooked me at all. But of course, I have no idea how similar/faithful it was to the book. (Given that LeGuin or Tolkien were decidedly not what it felt like to me, it might not have been very faithful. Donna Tartt I could see, though.)

ETA: Oh, and I wanted to say, I mainly remember Lev Grossman from the fandom interview thing he did on LJ a couple of years ago, that's where I first heard about the book as well.

[nightdog_barks]

Heh, and I never watched a single episode of the TV show. SyFy is not a cable channel that's on our regular watch list, and for whatever reason, the description of the show didn't grab me at all.

Le Guin and Tolkien came to mind for me because of the "quest" aspect of the book. I actually thought of also mentioning Joseph Campbell (Hero with a Thousand Faces) for that quest archetype. :D

And omg yes, these awful characters. I think that was the biggest problem with a lot of readers. And yes, the main character (Quentin) is a whiny brat some of the time, and there's a point where he and his friends are basically behaving like a bunch of over-privileged bro dirtbags -- it strongly reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero and Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby. That was the point where I wished they'd all fall off a cliff. *g* But ... that's how some people behave. It's real. And to counter that, there are parts of the book that are genuinely beautiful. I know it sounds ridiculous out of context, but there's a chapter where they turn into geese, and it's just gorgeous. :D

AND yep, I remember Grossman's fandom interview. I believe at the time it was widely viewed as a mainstream writer finally approaching fandom and fanfic as a legit activity. As I recall, word of mouth went through the fic community that this guy was safe to talk to -- he wasn't going to gain our trust, as it were, and then turn around and write "HAHA CAN YOU BELIEVE THESE LOSERS??!!??" *g*

[silverjackal]

It's good to see this review because I've had the book recommended to me, but hesitated due to mixed reactions. I think our reading has overlapped enough that I can trust your thoughts -- I like Tolkien. I like LeGuin. I would have liked Lewis more had he not been so incredibly heavy-handed with the religion (and bear in mind please that I read the books as an adult -- I've read a great deal of ostensible "children's literature" when I was working on my English comprehension. Maybe it wasn't so beneficial... ;D). Do you think I'd like the book given what you know of my tastes, or would it be a bit too dark for me. (At the moment I have no stomach for things like graphic torture or rape. I can pay attention to the international news for that *any time*. I don't need it in fiction.)

[nightdog_barks]

No graphic torture or rape in this book. Some people die, but the deaths are not "milked" for any over-the-top gore. There were a couple of parts of the book (both involving the same characters) that I found INTENSELY creepy, and the central image from both scenes haunted me for days afterwards. (It's not a bad image, but it's deeply eerie, like a Magritte painting come to life.)

I think the only thing you might find offensive is, as I said to Felis upstream, that there are points where the protagonist Quentin Coldwater and his friends behave like spoiled, over-privileged frat boys. And yet! They feel like real people, as real as the dissolute young nihilists drifting through life in Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero.

Magic is real in this world Grossman has created, and it has to be worked at. It's not an easy art. And sometimes it turns and bites its students.

[silverjackal]

I think I'll be trying the book after all then, and take the risk of giving up on it because I can't bring myself to care about the characters. Thank you! :)