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mlafave's reviews
331 reviews
Mister Magic by Kiersten White
Masquerading behind 90s pop nostalgia, cults, and analog horror is a deeply affecting story about what it means to lose a religion, or really, any major defining group of your childhood. In Mister Magic, Kiersten White uses the concept of a 90s television show called Mister Magic, featuring an almost Babadook-esque magician and a group of six children, as a way of tackling the way that media - and thereby the people who make that media - shape culture as a whole. White interweaves social media posts, blogs, and excerpts from the podcast about Mister Magic (the show) to bring her reader into the world in which Mister Magic existed, and then slowly turns up the heat as it becomes clear that this show is not what it seems.
Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee
Molly McGhee's debut novel Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a surreal almost-ode, almost-elegy for the modern worker. Abernathy finds himself thrown into circumstances that he doesn't understand, and in fact forces himself to not understand to preserve his sanity. This strategy works...until it doesn't. Keenly aware of the ways that labor works today and deeply inventive in the ways that she addresses it, McGhee crafts a darkly comic tale for this age. What starts as a workplace novel turns nightmare-ish (literally!) as the relationships between these compassionately rendered characters unfolds. If you love a reimagination of modern life through a darkly surrealist lens, pick this up!