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A review by twistingsnake
Mister Magic by Kiersten White
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
I knew about halfway through this book that this author had been raised in a some sort of religious cult. I knew that because I was raised in a religious cult. My childhood was filled with an endless cycle of programming, trying to mold me into a perfect little girl, a good future wife. I sewed dollies for my dowry chest, listened to someone's mother drone on about how my future husband was going to abuse me and that it was my fault, even though I hadn't met him yet (and what a blessing that would be when I did!) If you weren't a good kid, you weren't a loved kid and even when you were loved, you knew that love was conditional on how good you could - and would continue - to be.
I'm an adult now and the child inside me does not want to remember the past. It's a hazy, half-collection of pictures and emotions. I remember being someone that I wasn't and the person I was only getting to come out in small, contained bursts that always followed with painful consequences. I do not miss being a child, and I do not romanticize being a child, and sometimes I don't feel like I ever really got to be one at all.
Mister Magic is, on the surface level, a horror book about children's television. It's a testament to the genre, even if its explanations and descriptions of the show itself are vague at best, abstract at worst. That's not where the magic of this book lies. This is a story about pushing past the veil and seeing things for what they were. It's about questioning the desire to moralize children to the point of destroying them - about how despite it all, a child is still a person, underneath the roles and flaws we assign them when they don't confirm to our expectations. It's about correcting the problems of the past and making a better future - one that might not have been possible, if you didn't look back at how bad it all really was. I wasn't expecting this book to hit me as hard as it did, but the author and my lived experiences lining up in such a painful parallel way left me in tears when I read the first line of her author note. I don't think you have to have been raised in a cult to enjoy this - it's a great little horror book on it's own, it's interesting and clever and the ending fits the drapes. If you were raised in a cult though and lost your childhood to the expectations of adults who had no business in killing the spark inside you to make you into an imitation of a person - this one is going to hit, and hit hard.
I'm an adult now and the child inside me does not want to remember the past. It's a hazy, half-collection of pictures and emotions. I remember being someone that I wasn't and the person I was only getting to come out in small, contained bursts that always followed with painful consequences. I do not miss being a child, and I do not romanticize being a child, and sometimes I don't feel like I ever really got to be one at all.
Mister Magic is, on the surface level, a horror book about children's television. It's a testament to the genre, even if its explanations and descriptions of the show itself are vague at best, abstract at worst. That's not where the magic of this book lies. This is a story about pushing past the veil and seeing things for what they were. It's about questioning the desire to moralize children to the point of destroying them - about how despite it all, a child is still a person, underneath the roles and flaws we assign them when they don't confirm to our expectations. It's about correcting the problems of the past and making a better future - one that might not have been possible, if you didn't look back at how bad it all really was. I wasn't expecting this book to hit me as hard as it did, but the author and my lived experiences lining up in such a painful parallel way left me in tears when I read the first line of her author note. I don't think you have to have been raised in a cult to enjoy this - it's a great little horror book on it's own, it's interesting and clever and the ending fits the drapes. If you were raised in a cult though and lost your childhood to the expectations of adults who had no business in killing the spark inside you to make you into an imitation of a person - this one is going to hit, and hit hard.