Book Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

I think it would be too simplistic to say that if you liked the Harry Potter books and/or grew up on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, then you’ll like Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, even if that happens to be true.

Instead, I would go one step further and say if you ever hoped, prayed, needed the worlds in those books to be true… If you ever sat on the staircase in your house as a little kid staring intently at a photograph waiting for magic to pull you into the picture and an amazing adventure (like I did when I was a kid)… If even as you’re entering middle-age, or leaving it behind, you still think a magical adventure is somehow waiting around the corner for you, then The Magicians truly is the book for you.

The Magicians is the story of Quentin Coldwater, a quiet, nerdy kid, who at age 17 has not yet found his place in the world. Instead, he lives inside his imagination, in Fillory, that idyllic, cozy make-believe land, where animals talk and orphaned children go on merry adventures. For Quentin, a magical life in Fillory is the life he was meant to live. So he thinks he’s finally on the right track when, on his way to a college admissions interview, he receives an invitation to test for and attend a magical college in upstate New York.

During his five years at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, Quentin learns all about magic, including how to cast spells and shapeshift, while at the same time experiencing college just like every teenager does, making friends, discovering sex, and imbibing too much alcohol. But at the end of five years, he’s still unfulfilled, still searching for his place in the world.

Upon graduating, Quentin loses himself completely. He’s rich, powerful, living in Manhattan, what could be better? But under the almost frantic urge to satisfy every craving, Quentin still yearns for meaning. So when a fellow Brakebills graduate stumbles across the entryway to Fillory, Quentin is sure he’s finally found “it,” what he’s been waiting for his whole life.

But childhood dreams are often built on dark truths and Quentin is not prepared for what awaits.

I knew I was going to like, I mean really like, The Magicians when on page five (of the whopping 402-page book) I read the following:

He followed James and Julia past bodegas, Laundromats, hipster boutiques, cell-phone stores limned with neon piping, past a bar where old people were already drinking at three forty-five in the afternoon, past a brown-brick Veterans of Foreign Walls hall with plastic patio furniture on the sidewalk in front of it. All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn’t be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else, and he’d been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead.

Grossman hit the nail on the head. That is exactly how I feel most of the time, but I’d never seen it said so eloquently before. Of course, Grossman wasn’t talking about me. He’s describing Quentin’s feelings, who at the time of this paragraph is 17 years old.

But it didn’t matter that I’m a 37-year old woman and not a 17-year old boy. I related to Quentin almost from the get-go and even as Quentin gets older, more annoying, shallower, more hedonistic, shadows of “me” followed his story and kept me hooked. Even when I hated Quentin, I still saw myself in him because Quentin lives his life under the same “if only” philosophy I do.

If only magic were real, life would be perfect, Quentin believes, until magic is real and life still isn’t perfect. If only he could go to Fillory, life would be o.k. again. But of course, after tragedy life is never really o.k. again.

I live the same life. If only I could win the big Mega Millions jackpot. If only I could become a published author. If only I had two dogs and three cats. If only, if only, if only.

I suppose it’s fair to say that sometimes I accept that there is no “if only,” that this is the only life I get and I’d better start living it before it’s too late. Logically, I know that no matter where you go, there you are; there is no escape.

But deep inside I’m still waiting for “the life I was meant to lead” to be dropped in my lap, and that is why The Magicians was more than just a good story, one that pays homage to some of my favorite authors and fantasy stories.

Quentin is not a particularly likeable character, even if he is a compelling one. Nor is the end of the novel a very satisfying one. At the end Quentin has experienced some of life’s harshest lessons, and yet he doesn’t seemed to have actually learned anything.

On turning the last page, I found myself completely disappointed in Quentin, but perhaps in the same way I’m often disappointed in myself when I realize I haven’t grown up yet either, and that I’m still waiting for life to deliver happiness and fulfillment in a prettily-wrapped package to my door.