![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado1I finished reading Mister Magic two nights ago and gave it 4 stars out of 5 on Goodreads, taking off a star mostly because the message became a little overwrought toward the end. The last 4-5 chapters were a slog, but the rest of the book? Fantastic, creative, and genuinely scary.
The plot follows an isolated 38-year-old woman named Val who works on a secluded Idaho ranch. She and her elderly father work for room and board, tending the owner Gloria's horses and manning her summer riding camp. An early conversation between Val and a wealthy parent gives us a glimpse of the book's theme: Angry that her daughter isn't learning to ride, the wealthy mom demands that Val force her to get on a horse. Val calmly points out that the daughter has panic attacks when she's on a horse, which isn't safe for either her or the horse; since the kid also just plain DOES NOT want to learn how to ride, Val has her tending the baby goats instead, and the girl is much happier. Val expertly coaxes the mom into agreeing, and has the insight that Mom just wishes she'd had lessons when she was a girl. She aims Mom toward the adult riding lessons.
Yep, that whole thing is basically the theme of the book: let kids be themselves, with a distinct, exhilaratingly specific jab at organized religion along the way.
When Val's dad dies of a stroke, Gloria posts about the funeral on Facebook, and Val is greeted by three strange men ... men she feels inexplicably at home with. The first, Isaac, is a scrawny weak-chinned white man with untidy hair and a scraggly beard, who bursts into tears when he sees Val. This is the one Val feels the greatest tug toward. The other two are Javi (expensive suit, expensive smile, silver fox hair, mischievous and funny) and Marcus (devastatingly handsome, sweet and paternal).
Isaac, Javi, and Marcus swear that they were on a successful children's show with Val, 30 years ago. The thing is, that may well be true -- Val doesn't remember anything since she came to the ranch at age eight. But Isaac delivers another shocking blow: Val's mom is still alive, and she lives in a tiny Utah town called Bliss, not far from where the children's show was shot. Val's stunned. She always assumed she somehow killed her mom, and that's why she and Dad had to go into hiding. She's lived with a sense of profound shame and failure all her life, and "I killed my mom" was the only explanation that seemed to fit.
Well, she's GOT to meet her mom! Isaac, Marcus, and Javi let her tag along, although they all three think she should stay and finish out her dad's funeral instead. The three of them are heading back to the location where Mister Magic was shot for a reunion podcast. They pull up the show's article on Wikipedia so Val can read about it, but there's not much: lots of uncited sources and sections removed by the editors. But the gist of it is that Mister Magic started as a radio broadcast in the 30s, then made the jump to TV and ran continuously until 1991. There are no cast lists, just rumors -- lots of people swear Ronald Reagan was one of the kids on the show. The show always featured a circle of friends (six children) who summon Mister Magic with a song. Mister Magic always helps them when they get into trouble.
As the book goes on, Val meets the fifth member of the circle, a harried Mormon mom named Jenny, and learns that the sixth member was a sister she never knew she had: Kitty. It soon becomes clear that Kitty died on set, but the guys won't tell her what happened. They assure her that she was already gone by then. And we learn more about Mister Magic through cleverly-dropped hints: he led the children in rhyming songs! How cute! But slowly, you start to notice that some of those songs are sinister, and not in a "horror book" way. Jenny mentions the "modesty song" off-hand. The modesty song?! And Mister Magic was filmed just south of Salt Lake City? Hmm. The reader takes note.
And although Val's friends remember Mister Magic fondly, their memories seem a little ... off. Marcus lovingly recounts his job on the show. His role was "the Creative." With a flick of his hand, he could "paint" stunning, beautiful set pieces on the all-black backdrop of their set. He could costumes for all of them with just a gesture. (Obviously just movie magic, right? They were kids, they tell themselves... they just got so caught up in their imaginations that it really felt real). But Marcus' sets would sometimes be too big, too splashy, too colorful. Out of control. He would sometimes lose himself in his characters. And Mister Magic would always be there to put a gentle hand on Marcus' shoulder and whisper in his ear, tell him how to dial it back.
Hm! And then there's Javi, the Troublemaker, the only brown kid in a wealthy white New York family. Javi fondly remembers that on the show, he could get in as much mischief as he wanted, and Mister Magic would correct him, but he'd do it so, so gently. He would just put a long finger under Javi's chin, tip his head up, stare into his eyes.... and then what? "And then correct me." But Javi struggles to articulate how. He just knows, genuinely, that it was better than what came after, when the show ended and he had to live with his family full-time. Even now, as an adult, Javi's father sometimes takes a belt to him. And even now, Marcus has to hide certain aspects of himself -- he's getting divorced, he has kids, but he's just now tentatively coming out of the closet as gay.
Jenny never had this issue. Her role was The Friend. She was the loyal heart of the show. She always followed the rules! Why? Because Mister Magic was the only person who would ever give her a hug if she was good. And she was the only kid that Mister Magic hugged, too! She would do anything for that acknowledgment.
As for Isaac, his role was the watchful older brother. Two years older than the other kids, he was constantly at Mister Magic's side, anxiously watching. He was supposed to be there if Kitty scraped her knee, to comfort her. And he was supposed to cheer up Javi when he got scolded, make sure Jenny felt heard, etc. But sometimes, Isaac wasn't watching carefully, and Mister Magic was always there to grab his head and slowly turn it in the right direction.
All these kids are deeply affected by the lessons they learned. When Marcus shows too much of himself, he compulsively grabs his own shoulder and rubs it. Javi, who still has an impish sense of humor, sometimes balks at his own foul language and profusely apologizes; he still remembers the song they sang together about "clean mouths, clean hearts." Jenny hugs herself and works hard to raise her six kids as good rule followers. Isaac, when talking to Val, sometimes slowly turns his head away, as if someone is compelling him to look elsewhere.
Soon Val learns that everyone involved in Mister Magic lives in Bliss. It's a beautiful neighborhood in the middle of the desert. Incredibly green. But some people, like her mom (and Isaac's mom, too) are relegated to the outskirts, in a trashy RV park. Isaac's mom is a recovering alcoholic. Val's mom sits in front of a staticky TV all day, stinking of unwashed skin. When Val comes home, her mom isn't very interested. It turns out she never looked for Val. She was just pissed that she missed the final episode of Mister Magic because Val ran away, and people wanted to talk to her about it. Shocked, Val asks how her sister Kitty died, but again, all Mom cares about is that when Kitty died, the show went off the air.
Val: "You never looked for me?"
Mom: "You were a handful, kid. I couldn't handle you without him."
Val: "Without Dad?"
Mom: "No." (She stretches her hand out to the blank TV, palm up, and leaves it there, like she's waiting for someone to take her hand and make a deal.)
This gesture, the outstretched palm, is a motif repeated over and over again. In the prologue, we learn that it's part of the Mister Magic theme song. As Val recovers her memories, she remembers casting her open hand into the darkness on the show, waiting for someone to grab hold. That was how she summoned the magic every time -- because that was her job! She was the Leader.
When the podcast interviews start, each cast member trudges down to the basement studio alone. There they face a tall, narrow virtual screen built into the wall. The interviewer sweetly tears each of them apart, digging into their insecurities and childhood traumas. But she also asks each of them to make a deal with her, to sing the Mister Magic theme song one last time. Javi remembers that this was one of the lessons Mister Magic taught them: When you make a deal, you aren't just taking. You have to give something, too.
Wow, it's hard to summarize this book XD Important information is sprinkled throughout it, building smoothly to the conclusion, where it all ties together. I think I've got most of it now. The last important part is that all five cast members attend a gala in town to honor the show, where they discover that everyone is weirdly hostile to them. Even to Jenny, the only cast member who still lives in Bliss (who never left). The mayor has a biting conversation with Val, whom he clearly blames for "breaking the circle." He makes an off-hand comment about how Bliss was founded by a follower of Brigham Young, who was sent out to build a town one day away from Salt Lake City. But Young hated this particular follower, and deliberately sent him to a barren desert ... and look what a beautiful town grew from that!
Well, from Jenny, Val learns the whole truth. Or as much as Jenny knows. When Brigham Young's cast-outs came here, they heard an awful humming, like a broken AC. Val's heard the same thing ever since she came to the weird house where Mister Magic was supposedly filmed. When they followed the hum, the settlers found a portal to a pocket dimension where angels lived... and they realized that they could make a deal with these angels to turn Bliss into a flourishing town.
The portal needed someone to feed in. So one adult made the "holy sacrifice" to go inside. He was taken over and re-shaped by the forces inside, becoming the entity they call Mister Magic. As Mister Magic, he coaxed the townsfolk to give up six children too -- he would teach them how to behave. And in the meantime, he'd feed on everything that made them unique. Mister Magic would do this until the physical form hosting him broke down and died; then a new Mister Magic would be sacrificed.
When our main characters were on the show, that Mister Magic was Jenny's biological dad. He had been on the show himself as a kid, and he desperately wanted that for her. But after he walked through, he was never the same person. And, as it happens, some kids never made it back out. The mayor says, "No good children ever died on Mister Magic." But Kitty was swallowed up by the darkness there, and so were countless kids before her -- and after! Because the town of Bliss kept trying to revive the show in secret; kept sacrificing kids to the portal.
Isaac senses that this is what he was always being groomed for: to become the next Mister Magic. But Val won't let him. She goes into the portal herself to get Kitty out, and finds that Kitty and all the other lost children are too far-gone and incorporeal to leave. They would just die.
So she becomes the new Mister Magic instead -- one common element throughout the book has been that Val has an unusual inner strength. As a child, this made her the Leader. But it also allowed her to banish Mister Magic and steal his magic cape, something none of the other kids had ever been able to do. For almost a full "season" of episodes, Val kept the magic alive, and did it solely because she'd seen the way Mister Magic dulled her friends and she didn't like it. As an adult, Val is capable of even more -- she can wrestle the portal under her control and turn it into a force for good.
The book ends with Val's friends at Gloria's ranch. Javi and Marcus have just gotten married (I really liked their romance in this book), and their three kids are running around the place like gremlins. Jenny has left her Mormon husband and is working on her PhD while her whiny kids beg her to cater to their needs; Jenny refuses. Isaac has custody of his daughter Charlotte back (or at least partial custody) and Gloria's grandchildren are eagerly watching the new Mister Magic reboot on YouTube. Onscreen, Mister Magic (an unrecognizable version of Val) lets the children lead their own magical adventures and encourages them not to hide their emotions, even the negative ones.
It's a saccharine ending to an otherwise fantastic horror book. White says in the acknowledgements that this is a very personal story for her, and I think that becomes very clear -- in a bad way -- as the novel winds down. Those last few chapters are a bit too on-the-nose. Not plot-wise -- I think the concept of Val becoming a better Mister Magic is 100% the way to end it. Just the writing style. It really hammers you over the head with the message there. As someone who didn't realize the book HAD a message until at least 70% of the way through, I still thought it was unnecessary to state it so emphatically, over and over again.
But that's really my only critique. The scares were EXTREMELY chilling, and at every turn, the characters and narrative pleasantly surprised me.
Favorite character: Javi! Hands down.
Top three scares:
1) the silhouette at the top of the basement stairs with a blanket around its shoulders -- the way it silently opens one corner of the blanket to invite Val in, the way Isaac always does. But it's not Isaac.
2) The scene where Val finds a black thread in the scar on her palm and tugs it out, releasing an odor of infection and rot, and... well, hopefully you read the scene.
3) The simple concept of that strange house where Mister Magic was filmed, with windows stretching up to the sixth floor, no doors on any of the bedrooms, a TV in every room ... and the TVs come on at night of their own volition, and as Val walks down the stairs, she suddenly realizes she's lost count of what floor she's on ... and what if she accidentally walks down those stairs and right into the dreadful basement, where the portal is waiting?
The plot follows an isolated 38-year-old woman named Val who works on a secluded Idaho ranch. She and her elderly father work for room and board, tending the owner Gloria's horses and manning her summer riding camp. An early conversation between Val and a wealthy parent gives us a glimpse of the book's theme: Angry that her daughter isn't learning to ride, the wealthy mom demands that Val force her to get on a horse. Val calmly points out that the daughter has panic attacks when she's on a horse, which isn't safe for either her or the horse; since the kid also just plain DOES NOT want to learn how to ride, Val has her tending the baby goats instead, and the girl is much happier. Val expertly coaxes the mom into agreeing, and has the insight that Mom just wishes she'd had lessons when she was a girl. She aims Mom toward the adult riding lessons.
Yep, that whole thing is basically the theme of the book: let kids be themselves, with a distinct, exhilaratingly specific jab at organized religion along the way.
When Val's dad dies of a stroke, Gloria posts about the funeral on Facebook, and Val is greeted by three strange men ... men she feels inexplicably at home with. The first, Isaac, is a scrawny weak-chinned white man with untidy hair and a scraggly beard, who bursts into tears when he sees Val. This is the one Val feels the greatest tug toward. The other two are Javi (expensive suit, expensive smile, silver fox hair, mischievous and funny) and Marcus (devastatingly handsome, sweet and paternal).
Isaac, Javi, and Marcus swear that they were on a successful children's show with Val, 30 years ago. The thing is, that may well be true -- Val doesn't remember anything since she came to the ranch at age eight. But Isaac delivers another shocking blow: Val's mom is still alive, and she lives in a tiny Utah town called Bliss, not far from where the children's show was shot. Val's stunned. She always assumed she somehow killed her mom, and that's why she and Dad had to go into hiding. She's lived with a sense of profound shame and failure all her life, and "I killed my mom" was the only explanation that seemed to fit.
Well, she's GOT to meet her mom! Isaac, Marcus, and Javi let her tag along, although they all three think she should stay and finish out her dad's funeral instead. The three of them are heading back to the location where Mister Magic was shot for a reunion podcast. They pull up the show's article on Wikipedia so Val can read about it, but there's not much: lots of uncited sources and sections removed by the editors. But the gist of it is that Mister Magic started as a radio broadcast in the 30s, then made the jump to TV and ran continuously until 1991. There are no cast lists, just rumors -- lots of people swear Ronald Reagan was one of the kids on the show. The show always featured a circle of friends (six children) who summon Mister Magic with a song. Mister Magic always helps them when they get into trouble.
As the book goes on, Val meets the fifth member of the circle, a harried Mormon mom named Jenny, and learns that the sixth member was a sister she never knew she had: Kitty. It soon becomes clear that Kitty died on set, but the guys won't tell her what happened. They assure her that she was already gone by then. And we learn more about Mister Magic through cleverly-dropped hints: he led the children in rhyming songs! How cute! But slowly, you start to notice that some of those songs are sinister, and not in a "horror book" way. Jenny mentions the "modesty song" off-hand. The modesty song?! And Mister Magic was filmed just south of Salt Lake City? Hmm. The reader takes note.
And although Val's friends remember Mister Magic fondly, their memories seem a little ... off. Marcus lovingly recounts his job on the show. His role was "the Creative." With a flick of his hand, he could "paint" stunning, beautiful set pieces on the all-black backdrop of their set. He could costumes for all of them with just a gesture. (Obviously just movie magic, right? They were kids, they tell themselves... they just got so caught up in their imaginations that it really felt real). But Marcus' sets would sometimes be too big, too splashy, too colorful. Out of control. He would sometimes lose himself in his characters. And Mister Magic would always be there to put a gentle hand on Marcus' shoulder and whisper in his ear, tell him how to dial it back.
Hm! And then there's Javi, the Troublemaker, the only brown kid in a wealthy white New York family. Javi fondly remembers that on the show, he could get in as much mischief as he wanted, and Mister Magic would correct him, but he'd do it so, so gently. He would just put a long finger under Javi's chin, tip his head up, stare into his eyes.... and then what? "And then correct me." But Javi struggles to articulate how. He just knows, genuinely, that it was better than what came after, when the show ended and he had to live with his family full-time. Even now, as an adult, Javi's father sometimes takes a belt to him. And even now, Marcus has to hide certain aspects of himself -- he's getting divorced, he has kids, but he's just now tentatively coming out of the closet as gay.
Jenny never had this issue. Her role was The Friend. She was the loyal heart of the show. She always followed the rules! Why? Because Mister Magic was the only person who would ever give her a hug if she was good. And she was the only kid that Mister Magic hugged, too! She would do anything for that acknowledgment.
As for Isaac, his role was the watchful older brother. Two years older than the other kids, he was constantly at Mister Magic's side, anxiously watching. He was supposed to be there if Kitty scraped her knee, to comfort her. And he was supposed to cheer up Javi when he got scolded, make sure Jenny felt heard, etc. But sometimes, Isaac wasn't watching carefully, and Mister Magic was always there to grab his head and slowly turn it in the right direction.
All these kids are deeply affected by the lessons they learned. When Marcus shows too much of himself, he compulsively grabs his own shoulder and rubs it. Javi, who still has an impish sense of humor, sometimes balks at his own foul language and profusely apologizes; he still remembers the song they sang together about "clean mouths, clean hearts." Jenny hugs herself and works hard to raise her six kids as good rule followers. Isaac, when talking to Val, sometimes slowly turns his head away, as if someone is compelling him to look elsewhere.
Soon Val learns that everyone involved in Mister Magic lives in Bliss. It's a beautiful neighborhood in the middle of the desert. Incredibly green. But some people, like her mom (and Isaac's mom, too) are relegated to the outskirts, in a trashy RV park. Isaac's mom is a recovering alcoholic. Val's mom sits in front of a staticky TV all day, stinking of unwashed skin. When Val comes home, her mom isn't very interested. It turns out she never looked for Val. She was just pissed that she missed the final episode of Mister Magic because Val ran away, and people wanted to talk to her about it. Shocked, Val asks how her sister Kitty died, but again, all Mom cares about is that when Kitty died, the show went off the air.
Val: "You never looked for me?"
Mom: "You were a handful, kid. I couldn't handle you without him."
Val: "Without Dad?"
Mom: "No." (She stretches her hand out to the blank TV, palm up, and leaves it there, like she's waiting for someone to take her hand and make a deal.)
This gesture, the outstretched palm, is a motif repeated over and over again. In the prologue, we learn that it's part of the Mister Magic theme song. As Val recovers her memories, she remembers casting her open hand into the darkness on the show, waiting for someone to grab hold. That was how she summoned the magic every time -- because that was her job! She was the Leader.
When the podcast interviews start, each cast member trudges down to the basement studio alone. There they face a tall, narrow virtual screen built into the wall. The interviewer sweetly tears each of them apart, digging into their insecurities and childhood traumas. But she also asks each of them to make a deal with her, to sing the Mister Magic theme song one last time. Javi remembers that this was one of the lessons Mister Magic taught them: When you make a deal, you aren't just taking. You have to give something, too.
Wow, it's hard to summarize this book XD Important information is sprinkled throughout it, building smoothly to the conclusion, where it all ties together. I think I've got most of it now. The last important part is that all five cast members attend a gala in town to honor the show, where they discover that everyone is weirdly hostile to them. Even to Jenny, the only cast member who still lives in Bliss (who never left). The mayor has a biting conversation with Val, whom he clearly blames for "breaking the circle." He makes an off-hand comment about how Bliss was founded by a follower of Brigham Young, who was sent out to build a town one day away from Salt Lake City. But Young hated this particular follower, and deliberately sent him to a barren desert ... and look what a beautiful town grew from that!
Well, from Jenny, Val learns the whole truth. Or as much as Jenny knows. When Brigham Young's cast-outs came here, they heard an awful humming, like a broken AC. Val's heard the same thing ever since she came to the weird house where Mister Magic was supposedly filmed. When they followed the hum, the settlers found a portal to a pocket dimension where angels lived... and they realized that they could make a deal with these angels to turn Bliss into a flourishing town.
The portal needed someone to feed in. So one adult made the "holy sacrifice" to go inside. He was taken over and re-shaped by the forces inside, becoming the entity they call Mister Magic. As Mister Magic, he coaxed the townsfolk to give up six children too -- he would teach them how to behave. And in the meantime, he'd feed on everything that made them unique. Mister Magic would do this until the physical form hosting him broke down and died; then a new Mister Magic would be sacrificed.
When our main characters were on the show, that Mister Magic was Jenny's biological dad. He had been on the show himself as a kid, and he desperately wanted that for her. But after he walked through, he was never the same person. And, as it happens, some kids never made it back out. The mayor says, "No good children ever died on Mister Magic." But Kitty was swallowed up by the darkness there, and so were countless kids before her -- and after! Because the town of Bliss kept trying to revive the show in secret; kept sacrificing kids to the portal.
Isaac senses that this is what he was always being groomed for: to become the next Mister Magic. But Val won't let him. She goes into the portal herself to get Kitty out, and finds that Kitty and all the other lost children are too far-gone and incorporeal to leave. They would just die.
So she becomes the new Mister Magic instead -- one common element throughout the book has been that Val has an unusual inner strength. As a child, this made her the Leader. But it also allowed her to banish Mister Magic and steal his magic cape, something none of the other kids had ever been able to do. For almost a full "season" of episodes, Val kept the magic alive, and did it solely because she'd seen the way Mister Magic dulled her friends and she didn't like it. As an adult, Val is capable of even more -- she can wrestle the portal under her control and turn it into a force for good.
The book ends with Val's friends at Gloria's ranch. Javi and Marcus have just gotten married (I really liked their romance in this book), and their three kids are running around the place like gremlins. Jenny has left her Mormon husband and is working on her PhD while her whiny kids beg her to cater to their needs; Jenny refuses. Isaac has custody of his daughter Charlotte back (or at least partial custody) and Gloria's grandchildren are eagerly watching the new Mister Magic reboot on YouTube. Onscreen, Mister Magic (an unrecognizable version of Val) lets the children lead their own magical adventures and encourages them not to hide their emotions, even the negative ones.
It's a saccharine ending to an otherwise fantastic horror book. White says in the acknowledgements that this is a very personal story for her, and I think that becomes very clear -- in a bad way -- as the novel winds down. Those last few chapters are a bit too on-the-nose. Not plot-wise -- I think the concept of Val becoming a better Mister Magic is 100% the way to end it. Just the writing style. It really hammers you over the head with the message there. As someone who didn't realize the book HAD a message until at least 70% of the way through, I still thought it was unnecessary to state it so emphatically, over and over again.
But that's really my only critique. The scares were EXTREMELY chilling, and at every turn, the characters and narrative pleasantly surprised me.
Favorite character: Javi! Hands down.
Top three scares:
1) the silhouette at the top of the basement stairs with a blanket around its shoulders -- the way it silently opens one corner of the blanket to invite Val in, the way Isaac always does. But it's not Isaac.
2) The scene where Val finds a black thread in the scar on her palm and tugs it out, releasing an odor of infection and rot, and... well, hopefully you read the scene.
3) The simple concept of that strange house where Mister Magic was filmed, with windows stretching up to the sixth floor, no doors on any of the bedrooms, a TV in every room ... and the TVs come on at night of their own volition, and as Val walks down the stairs, she suddenly realizes she's lost count of what floor she's on ... and what if she accidentally walks down those stairs and right into the dreadful basement, where the portal is waiting?
