The irritating thing about cliches and proverbs is how often they turn out to be correct. In the case of Charlie Jane Anders’ new novel, Lessons in Magic and Disaster, the proverb that turns out to be true is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. All Jamie wanted was a little luck with her thesis, for her partner to find success with theirs, and for her mother to start recovering from the loss of her wife. Jamie uses the unique magic she discovered with the best of intentions, only to see their lives spiral out of control.
Jamie has learned that she can cast spells—little more than wishes and tokens—in places where nature and humanity have tried to claim the same patch of earth. Abandoned gardens, overgrown cemeteries, and even beaches hold a bit of magic for her to tap into if she can frame her intentions clearly enough. The important thing, she emphasizes later, is to not think too hard about the magical wish. This last step had me thinking of the strange effectiveness of the placebo effect until things actually start happening when Jamie and her mother, Serena, start casting a lot of wish spells.
Lessons in Magic and Disaster really starts to take off once Serena gets her hands on magic. And thank goodness it does. To be honest, I struggled with the first third or so of this book because I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the characters. Serena gets some good character development once Anders starts including interstitial scenes of Serena’s love story with her wife, but I found Jamie’s primary characteristic to be naivety. We never really get to know Jaime’s partner or any of the other characters. Jamie’s research project, about Jane Collier and Sarah Fielding (sister of novelist and satirist Henry Fielding), isn’t very well integrated until later in the novel. I found Jamie’s very academic dialogue very jarring; these passages felt like jumping back and forth between a seminar and something a bit like a fairy tale. This book would have worked a lot better for me if it had been more tightly written, both in terms of pacing and in subject matter.
I’m trying not to knock this book too much, because there are some things I genuinely liked about it. I enjoyed the originality of the magic in this world. It’s refreshing to see a magic that mostly rejects rules and is based on what feels right in the moment. I also appreciated that both Jamie and Serena learn, finally, to have a care for how their actions affect others. The conclusion really redeemed the experience of reading Lessons in Magic and Disaster. I think book clubs that like books about mother-daughter relationships will find a lot to talk about here.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.