So. Lev Grossman's The Magicians is the critically-acclaimed fantasy-for-grupps at the moment. It made me grouchy.
One problem with it is that it's rather good. Mr. Grossman come up with a really clever line every few dozen pages, and some magnificent images here and there, and I certainly was surprised by what happened, pretty much throughout the book. Well, surprised and irritated, mostly.
The big problem is that our main character, Quentin, is unlikable in all the ways that main characters are unlikable in the kinds of critically-acclaimed books that make me cranky. He's self-critical, misogynist, irresponsible, fearful, small-minded and aimless. Realistically so! It's a triumph of the art, painting a character in words that is so nasty to be with.
The whole thing feels to me like a book written to be a grown-up version of the Harry Potter and Narnia series—as it clearly was. But the reaction seemed to be that the Hogwarts and Narnia, as places, were too charming, too pleasant to read about, and most of all, too much fun. Real magic, Mr. Grossman seems to be saying, wouldn't be fun at all. So he wrote a book chock full of magic with no fun at all. Which I suppose is an achievement, of sorts.
Lois McMaster Bujold, in a review of a book I haven't read yet, wrote something interesting:
There exists a quality of a book that I do not have a name for; it is approached by terms like “mode” and “voice” and “the writer’s world-view”, but isn’t quite any of these. I short-hand it as, “What kind of head-space am I going to be stuck in now? ” And is it one I that will enjoy being stuck in?
I would call it the sensibility of the book, I guess. Some books are charming, some books are melancholy, some books are light-hearted or great-spirited or kind. Some books are mean. This is a mean book.
Thanks,
-E.
Lev Grossman in fact started to write the book before Harry Potter came out, and was going to use Narnia, and then had to rewrite a bunch of stuff because Harry Potter came out and got popular and he needed to not look like a copycat, plus the Narnia estate told him to bugger off so he had to invent a pseudo-Narnia. Lisa and I went to a very fun talk he gave at ReaderCon about all this before the book came out.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree about the head-space in the book overall, though I thought it was fine for the first half. Then everything changes, and I hated the sensibility for the second half. And even more intensely for the sequel, which I do not recommend at all. Recently I read the third book of the trilogy, and loved it. Partly because the head-space kept changing to different characters who I didn't hate as much, or at least not in smaller doses, or at least in different ways. Also there was more fun, in a way that increased as the book went on instead of decreasing.
So will you be reading the sequel?
ReplyDeleteThe pseudo-Narnia thing was very odd, and the business with the estate makes a lot of sense. It's so clearly a pseudo-Narnia that I wondered why he didn't make it Narnia, although he does make use of the audiences' expectations of it being and not-being Narnia. And then, of course, at the end there's a gratuitous cheap shot at the writer of the pseudo-Narnia, which is typical, I think, of the book's sensibility.
ReplyDeleteNo, I have no plans to read the sequel, Fran, so you don't have to worry about me getting all grumpy again. Plus, I've already got a G.
I read it as an exploration of why so many people who go to elite schools and are brilliant burn out or spend a few years aimless. It's got a "Less than Zero" aspect to it along with the heroic fantasy and that's an uneasy joining.
ReplyDeleteThe sequels are both quite good but have equally unsettling aspects.
The connection to Less Than Zero is an excellent one; I feel they share a sensibility, to a large extent.
DeleteI loathed Less Than Zero.
Thanks,
-E.