The Magicians - Lev Grossman

I'm not sure I quite get Lev Grossman's newest book, The Magicians. On the one hand, it's a genre-bending, sensitively observed treatment of a young man's life at a school for magic; on the other, it's a problematic and schitzophrenic novel that suffers from too much abstract framework and not enough attention to narrative.

The first half of the book is really exquisite, crack for grown-ups who still lust after books of the Harry Potter ilk - well-written tomes detailing lives more adventurous and fantastical than our own. It's written for those of us who grew up, as Grossman must have, reading Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis' Narnia books over and over, imbibing every detail and wishing that we too could step into Middle Earth, or Narnia, or through the looking glass, just once. And that's Quentin, the brilliant main character who at 17, seemingly set for a life of average brilliance at a Princeton or a Yale, instead finds himself set up at an elite school for magic in upstate New York. He's not a particularly happy young guy - Grossman adeptly describes him as walking with a slight stoop to his shoulders, as if expecting the world to come crashing down on him at any moment. And that, I think, is the root and soul of this wistful novel: how, in the process of growing up, we struggle to adapt and cope with what the world throws us, and how we either manage to survive and thrive, or crash and fizzle, or - worse than anything else - steel ourselves against the mania of life and move through the hours in a sort of glum haze.

The first half of the novel captures this theme beautifully, in scenes evocative of English boarding school novels. Though set in a backdrop of magical discovery, the Brakesbill sections are more interested in Quentin's journey of self-discovery, and they amble along with little else to propel them but impending graduation (after four years) and the promise of characters' growth. And, because of the delicacy of Grossman's writing and the detail he devotes to the magical world's dark and complex philosophy, these scenes largely work. At times, they feel rushed and truncated (four years in two hundred pages seems a bit of a stretch), but when Grossman drops from expository narrative into direct action of a scene, the magic really crackles.

The novel takes a bizarre turn about 2/3 of the way in. Newly graduated, Quentin and his girlfriend move to Manhatten to embark on the hedonism of young magicians, who have all the money and power in the world but no direction. Some life lessons are learned, and some hearts are broken, until an old friend from school shows up with the key to help them all enter the fictional fairytale land of their favorite childhood books. At this point, though still steeped in a kind of emotional realism, the novel begins to feel much more like allegory. The group of young magicians does indeed make it into the other world in search of a tidy quest, like the ones they remember from the books, only to find themselves, in the end, embroiled in a darker, more vicious battle than they had ever imagined, one that will tear them apart and affect the remainder of their lives to come.

The novel wavers through these scenes, and they never seem fully allegorical nor fully a part of the previous sections in the novel. The tones of alienation and abandonment are still present, but they're buried under the bizarre, still rather rushed, adventures of the characters. It's hard to know whether Grossman is participating in a send up of fictional lands, particularly Narnia, or whether he's trying to create his own contemporary version; regardless, the purpose is unclear, and these scenes feel flat and forced. When the character encounter some mild action and violence, Grossman seems unsure how to handle it, and the resulting effect is anticlimactic and, worse, boring.

The novel itself is anticlimactic, fizzling out rather than coming to any kind of satisfactory ending. It's also ambivalent, as Quentin wavers over what to do with his wrecked life, and as he trys to decide what will fulfill him.

But perhaps that's the point. Grossman, particularly in the beginning chapters, is an adept story-teller and seems in charge of his material. I have a hard time believing that he would allow the second half of the novel to go so wildly off the rails. Rather, I wonder if the trip through the land of Fillory isn't more of his meditation on coming-of-age, simply shifted into a different format. And the more I contemplate the ending, in which Quentin steps out the window of his high rise office building to join the magicians who have come fetch him, I wonder if it isn't simply an allegorical treatment for suicide. If so, I appreciate what Grossman is trying to do, but I can't help feeling incredibly unsatisfied, led down a path only to be disappointed by what was at the end.