To answer that question with another: does it matter? The Magicians by Lev Grossman (Viking 2009) (ISBN 978-0-670-02055-3) is a fascinating read. As a page-turner, it is a success. It is also a lot more.
The Literary Magic of The Magicians and Lev Grossman
At first blush it would be tempting to cast The Magicians as an adult-like Harry Potter derivative. That would be too simple an approach to this amazing book and do it a disservice. Grossman's writing and creative imagination are too good for that.
While there are Potteresq parallels in the props of the story, primarily in certain similarities between the two schools of magic – Harry's Hogwarts and Quentin's Brakebills – these are ultimately superficial to the story.
Further, such similarities do not detract. If anything, they simply build on the alternate reality theory already established with the Harry Potter genre, a nod to the concept that specially gifted extra-human beings are tapped to enter a world where their talents in magic and quantum physics can be developed and controlled.
How that magic works in Quentin's world is fascinating.
Quentin Coldwater's Coming of Age
The Magicians unfolds completely through the perspective of its main character, Quentin Coldwater, 17-year-old genius at social right-angles to his Brooklyn, NY world and financially comfortable but otherwise ordinary parents.
From the beginning, the story discloses three key facts about Quentin: he is brilliant but self-absorbed with lack of self-confidence; he is obsessed with a childhood story of a fantasy place called Fillory; he is bound for a top college and presumably success beyond that, but he has little interest in which one, being focused more on the unrequited love of a girl.
As the story opens, Quentin is the odd man out in a 3-way best friend triangle, working off his angst by performing a magic trick in his pocket. Enter one dead stranger and a mystery envelope and it is a fast trip to Brakebills from there. His adeptness with coins aids his acceptance into the magical realm.
Bottom line: Quentin is an exceedingly unhappy and ill-at-ease young man. While this is not an unusual state for a 17-year-old coming of age, for Quentin it is a condition exacerbated by academic brilliance, unfathomable talent, a bent for obsession, and an inability, on occasion, to notice or comprehend the obvious.
These are themes that Grossman develops throughout the story. These themes all fit within the paradigm of miscast genius. At many levels, Quentin was destined for Brakebills' world.
Multiiple Complex Levels of The Magicians
On one level the book is a satisfying addition to fantasy genre. Setting Brakebills within a small time warp in upstate New York along the Hudson River is a great touch, keeping the reader – and Quentin – half connected with a "normal" reality.
Grossman makes the two worlds and their dimensional connection so believable, the reader is tempted to take a river cruise and peer along the shoreline, attempting to catch the outline of Brakebills through the magicians' spellwork haze.
On a deeper level, beneath the fantasy, The Magicians is more akin to the type of darkness disguised in the fun and metaphor one finds in Alice in Wonderland. For indeed, as the story develops, it does seem that Quentin is ever farther down a rabbit hole.
Is it a hole he has dug for himself? One keeps wondering if the next page will find the reader suddenly awakening alongside Quentin, locked in a padded room, perhaps after a visit to his home, to discover that when his medication wears off he is entombed in the alternate gritty reality of a private mental institution. Who is Quentin Coldwater and where does he really live and belong? These are ultimately Quentin's questions.
But if he is locked in a room somewhere, it can hardly hold him, for whatever else Brakebills really is in upstate New York, it is surely Quentin's world, a stepping stone to another reality. The ultimate twist of the fantastical story is just out of reach as the pages turn, a puzzle with an answer Lev Grossman spins just ahead of the reader, keeping it tantalizing out of sight -- a magician's slight of hand, a shadow in the corner of the eye -- until finally the pieces of the story-within-story-within-story, like a Chinese puzzle box, finally fall in place.
The only unsatisfying bit is that Quentin, genius though he may be in mastering math, magickal pedagogical assignments, and mentor magicians' controlled experiments, was not better at figuring out himself and the truth of his world a little sooner. Like so many, Quentin is the author of his own misguided misery and unfortunately that of others as well. Quentin is doomed to learn the hard way and takes victims down with him.
For all this, the book is a compelling read, peopled with original, arresting characters, and flashes of humor and wit.
Lev Grossman is a talented writer. In The Magicians, he has created both a great story and much to ponder -- two hallmarks of great literature.
Linda Ashar - Linda C. Ashar is a lawyer, educator, horse breeder, freelance writer, and artist. Her 25-year law practice in Avon, Ohio, focuses on ...
