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Mister Magic (Kiersten White)
This book is about a nostalgic kid's TV show that... somehow... everyone remembers watching as a kid... but no one can actually find any information about it online or anywhere. (One of my favorite parts of the book are the found documents that sometimes arise after chapter breaks: a blog post or a wikipedia post or even once the notes of a fanfic!) The six kids who were featured on the show, now grown-ups, are having a "cast reunion."
The POV character, Val, finds out that she was one of the six kids, but she doesn't remember anything about it. Doesn't remember being on the show, doesn't remember what it was like, barely remembers the other kids -- only remembers a vast sense of guilt and shame, and knows that her dad hid both of them away for decades, but she doesn't remember why.
About midway through the book, the clue dropped for me. The clue was one of the grown-up kids, Jenny, saying, "This is the way to live, you know? In the world, not of the world." Mormon (*) culture is full of little taglines like this, and that was when I sat up and knew that the author had grown up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It looked pretty clear at the time, and became more and more clear as the book went on, that she is no longer a member. (**) And the entire book is pretty clearly written as a savage cry from her heart against any powers, whether it be angels or monsters or principalities, or things present, or things fictional, or any other creature -- that would diminish one's selfhood, that would restrict oneself to a set of rules and boxes and living entirely within those. But she manages to do all this in the scope of the world of the book; I never felt like I was being lectured at or that whatever was being said didn't fit with the characters and their journeys. (Or, if there are lectures, they seamlessly fit with what you might expect from a children's show that has little rhymes that convey messages, as children's shows do.)
(*) As usual, I use "Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints" when I'm referring to the religion, as we have been asked to do, and "Mormon" when I primarily am referring to culture, especially before the 2010's.
(**) There's an afterword where she says this very thing, but I already knew.
Something I really liked about the ending is that it's been a long-standing complaint of mine that while it's a reasonably common trope of a main character ascending to become the wise mentor figure, that character is almost always male, ugh. Not this time, yeah!
(I also thought the fakeout, where Isaac becomes Mister Magic, was well done -- I was all "okay..." which quickly became "wait, what?" and "but...!")
It's a very fast and almost breezy read in style (if not not in content) -- it reads like YA, though the concerns of the characters, who are all grown-ups now, are adult.
The POV character, Val, finds out that she was one of the six kids, but she doesn't remember anything about it. Doesn't remember being on the show, doesn't remember what it was like, barely remembers the other kids -- only remembers a vast sense of guilt and shame, and knows that her dad hid both of them away for decades, but she doesn't remember why.
About midway through the book, the clue dropped for me. The clue was one of the grown-up kids, Jenny, saying, "This is the way to live, you know? In the world, not of the world." Mormon (*) culture is full of little taglines like this, and that was when I sat up and knew that the author had grown up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It looked pretty clear at the time, and became more and more clear as the book went on, that she is no longer a member. (**) And the entire book is pretty clearly written as a savage cry from her heart against any powers, whether it be angels or monsters or principalities, or things present, or things fictional, or any other creature -- that would diminish one's selfhood, that would restrict oneself to a set of rules and boxes and living entirely within those. But she manages to do all this in the scope of the world of the book; I never felt like I was being lectured at or that whatever was being said didn't fit with the characters and their journeys. (Or, if there are lectures, they seamlessly fit with what you might expect from a children's show that has little rhymes that convey messages, as children's shows do.)
(*) As usual, I use "Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints" when I'm referring to the religion, as we have been asked to do, and "Mormon" when I primarily am referring to culture, especially before the 2010's.
(**) There's an afterword where she says this very thing, but I already knew.
Spoilers for the end
Something I really liked about the ending is that it's been a long-standing complaint of mine that while it's a reasonably common trope of a main character ascending to become the wise mentor figure, that character is almost always male, ugh. Not this time, yeah!
(I also thought the fakeout, where Isaac becomes Mister Magic, was well done -- I was all "okay..." which quickly became "wait, what?" and "but...!")
It's a very fast and almost breezy read in style (if not not in content) -- it reads like YA, though the concerns of the characters, who are all grown-ups now, are adult.
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Thank you for clarifying! I had been wondering.
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