The Magicians by Lev Grossman: http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Novel-Lev-Grossman/dp/0670020559/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263768099&sr=1-1
What if Narnia and Hogwarts were real? Or even magic itself, like we've read about in these books? Such is the premise of The Magicians. Both the Narnia and Harry Potter sagas are mentioned by name, but of course The Magicians has its own magical land called Fillory. Our hero, Quentin, has grown up reading all about Fillory and its stories and Queens and Kings. I couldn't help but recall all the stories of Narnia with the mentions of Fillory. And like Harry Potter, Quentin thinks he is an ordinary student but finds himself a new pupil at Brakebills, a magical school in New York.
But this isn't some allegory about Christianity and our choices. Nor is it the story of an epic battle between good an evil. While both elements are alluded to and serve as a subtext, the real issue at stake is what happens when we aren't happy enough in our own reality?
The great theme of Harry Potter, that Love can conquer any evil, and that those who love us never really leave us, just happens to be told in a Magical world that exists within our own. Wands and spells are weapons, rather than guns.
As I mentioned earlier, the Chronicles of Narnia are a great Christian Allegory, with Aslan representing the Christ and the final book in the series, The Last Battle, reading much like the New Testament's Revelation. Magic and talking animals exist in Narnia, much like in Fillory.
What makes the Harry Potter and Narnia stories so appealing, and what is the Hook in The Magicians is that so many children and adults who have read these series think how great it would be to live in Narnia, to be able to wave a wand and have the potatoes peeled. In other words, the magic in these books is a means to an end, a metaphor, an agent to progressing a story. I admit that I often joke, "If I only had a house elf..."
This rambling is getting to the point of what would really happen if we suddenly had magic at our disposal? In theory, it would fix everything... but would it? And what if those fabled places of our childhood did exist after all, and we were able to discover them, would we find them to be paradise? Is happiness and contentment a choice, really?
Of course there's some great magical imagery in the book, and complex relationships between the characters. But these questions about what real happiness means are at the heart of the novel. And if you lose everything, what do you have left to find?
Took me a while to finish this book because of this 52 in 52 challenge I set myself, but I'm glad I read it.
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