It’s Will. He delivers a good performance. What he is narrating is a very specific story that is geared toward a self-help rhetoric; unfortunately a fairly redundant one. You cannot make yourself happy by making money, you have to nurture yourself. So, the real reason to consume this is for the performance and the entertainment value while navigating to that point.

He goes into his fear of being a coward, but doesn’t really link it to gender roles or anything much beyond the fact that his dad was just like that. He tells you that his father was physically abusive and at one point, even while getting side tracked running to get some smokes, his dad told him that every single thing he does a mission. You either succeed, or you’re dead. Yes, his dad was in the army. And yes, Will’s success coming from a trauma response makes a heck of a lot of sense. Though, we also learn other key people literally in one room mostly was the reason he made it, an orchestration of Quincy Jones.

And then… with these things established, he simply launches into his career and highlights and his macro level trajectory to massive success. The vulnerability never really comes back. And I’m not very convinced it was ever really present.

To be honest, this book is calculating. There is a performative vulnerability at key sections fostering trust between the reader and Will. And, to be clear, that’s a fine way to construct this kind of a story. But, he often displays a lack of critical self awareness and skates over accountability in favour of easy contrition. I promise you that if you take all the possessions of your partner, pour lighter fluid on them, and then light them all when she arrives home to witness this act, you are not a well person. And frankly, saying she didn’t deserve that and moving on, and you were both young yada yada, is one thing. But he tries to isolate that event. Except… between the lines or in passing—presumably he thinks some of these things aren’t a big deal?—there is even more concerning behaviour. All of which mostly just made me think that he was a person that confronted his trauma far too late for those around him.

Ultimately, he navigates to an almost comical ending for me. He ends up going on the spiritual awakening journey and doing pseudo-mystical, drug induced trips, hires a life coach therapist because he doesn’t know who he is (as if that’s a singular experience at mid life). He also comes to the realization that memory isn’t a video, but a personal rendering that is not accurate. Or that, and I am not kidding here, other peoples’ feelings actually matter and should be considered. If you’re 20 maybe some of these epiphanies will be profound to you, but his own journey ultimately conforms to an archetypical journey, which only adds to the sterility and artificial aspects within the structure of the book. That’s why it was comical to me. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad he’s doing some work on himself and is in a good place now, at 50 years old, but make no mistake, this is, and feels like, a performance that is most likely simply another tick off the bucket list—rather than a wholehearted reckoning and self-examination of an individual.

I think this would have been 5 stars for me if it wasn’t so self aware. Queer characters and themes, an interesting, fairly complex plot. A story about stories and what stories mean is something I felt really drawn to. These days it feels like people consume so many kinds of stories but the content and “point” of them don’t seem to be internalized, only assigned entertainment value and ratings. It’s no wonder this book has done so well, flying in the face of that.

All through this book I was wondering what about these books always scratch a very particular itch for me. I think to some degree it’s her use of worldbuilding, which is basically a mix of hard, but delivered in a soft way—meaning the “rules” are present and codified; even have their root in folklore, fairytales, and fiction on the subject; yet are not info dumps and presented in an as-you-need-it manner, consistent with something like, say, Harry Potter. Soft delivery often leads to authors reworking aspects in a kind of ret-con. Again, see HP. But because all the rules here gel and have roots in the cultural consciousness already, it all feels “correct”, somehow.

For instance, when an Owen girl goes missing and another family member worries and wants to find her, someone tells her to bake a pie. The most important ingredient being “love”, which ends up sort of filling the missing person with a kind of home sickness that eventually makes her call. You could easily see that as something steeped in literature and co-opted into Hoffman’s magical cannon. But also just sort of makes sense? The nostalgia of homemade pie in western culture being what it is and the ritual of cooking being mundane, yet somehow also magical, is really enticing to believe in. You want to believe in the worldbuilding as you encounter more of it.

Another The thing I like the most about Hoffman is that her fiction consolidates a lot of mythology around witchcraft and incorporates it into the verisimilitudes of every day life in matter-of-fact terms. Just, by the way, as she does with inclusion of queer characters, it’s unquestioned and in the tides of their lives. This is even more augmented in this book, as it builds on all the previous books. Which makes a lot of sense and actually paints the last book I read, the one where the curse originated in historical fiction rather than contemporary times, in a much better light.

I didn’t like that one as much because I have consumed so many witchy stories set in that era. This incorporates a whole bunch of the family history, which I came to in an odd order (2,3,1,4). Characters established previously arrive, along with their tangled history and “flavour” of magic.

The family curse comes to a head in this conclusion. Family drama meets left-handed magic, ie: dark arts; all while grappling with the curse itself, which the family has been attempting to pretty much trick or circumnavigate for the entirety of their lives, to varying degrees of success and tragedy. This is a very fitting and well balanced ending that felt organic and earned. I will very likely read these all again (in the proper order). I think, for now, The Rules of Magic is still my favourite. But by a short margin.

Not as good as Rules of Magic, but it’s worth noting I read that first, which is not the reading order. I enjoy the prose style and the characters but the whole witches in Salem in the Olden times thing is now something I’m full up on and have noticed I am pretty sick of stories in that time period. A major part of Rules of Magic that was appealing that it was relatively modern day. And, it was actually building up to Practical Magic much more so than this one (which I have on hold).

I haven’t read practical magic so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Genre-fiction wise, this is a strange book that goes against type somewhat; that’s probably why I liked it so much.

It’s structure kept reminding me of non fiction, but the sweeping lives of the Owens had magical elements pretty often. It is just told in such a matter-of-fact, interesting authorial voice way, that it sort of becomes mundane.

It’S also fairly inclusive, which for some reason I didn’t expect either. It’s quite sad (which I like), but plays fair and feels well balanced. Unusual and interesting format. Will check out others in the series as well. 2020 saw a prequel to this prequel apparently, so I’ll probably nab that next before going on to practical magic.

The progenitor to be read very last in chronological order! I read the middle, then first, now this. A wild journey. I really like the unusual perspective and prose, as with Rules of Magic (which I think may still be my favourite).

With the prequels you can kind of see where this is all going but it’s still fun. And really readable and quick, compared to the others, which are like double the size of this novel. Like the dynamics, the unusual and snowball effect of magic, and the drama around (mis)communication.

All caught up and ready for the upcoming sequel in October. Which means maybe they’ll reprint the hardcover of this, so it matches the sequels!?... that’d be nice!

Big fan of the prose and how well the magician realism elements worked with this. I found the middle to have a lot of hang time, so much so it felt like it wasn’t moving forward at all almost. But thankfully it got going again. The sense of community and place also helped quite a bit as well. There’s some truly gut wrenching moments in this thing.

Some of this ventures into ‘no, shit’ territory. While some of it is surprising, such as acknowledging indigenous cultures and cosmologies and somewhat drawing parallels to this so-called Salvage Communism.

Yet, who is this for. Massive amounts of time is naturally dedicated to codifying the numerous tragedies of the worker. So, why ask a rhetorical question, like why is this book not for the average worker. It crosses into the masturbatory quite often with its diction and insipid references and jargon. Add that to another tragedy.

When it comes time to codify their own manifesto, it’s the most nebulous thoughts you could think of after consuming such a document. Basically, they’re waiting for a time when it will be possible to implement their salvage ways.

Read it for thoughts on capitalism, ecological issues related to the west, and a fragmented look at how intersectional the issues are, rather than any clear manifesto or addressing of aforementioned complexities.

Absolutely incredible and singular. I really enjoyed consuming this and approaching it like a puzzle, essentially. The act of reading while asking yourself, ‘What is this?’ Is actually really exciting. It’s not often you engage with something new to form. Or it isn’t for me, anyway.

Neither memoir or fiction, Ernaux attempts a time capsule encapsulating herself, representing, well, the culture of the time. Through thousands of notes and retreading old memory and sensations, she bottles the scent of recollection. She isn’t the subject; if anything, time and culture seem to be, in so far as they can be. They collide and bleed into one another. In so doing, illustrating the cycle of history and plucking the trends of culture that come back into fashion and recede, like sediment on a beach with the tide coming in.

It is fascinating that she uses the collective We for most things as well. Admitting a kind of complicity in the madness of crowds and sweeping energy of certain of notions taking everyone up, including her. Even if, at the time, she may not have thought and felt those things exactly, through the product of her memory, sifted through time, it appears that way regardless to her. That’s what happens when specificity cannot be obtained, I guess. There are the many small impressions and the inability to discern agency, so it is we and all of us. A collective responsibility that no one ever calls to account.

The tide of culture and nations continue to sew trends, probably courting longer memories; institutional ones. Or perhaps subservient to them like any other person. It does seem like the older people get, it becomes a ‘had to be there moment’. Except these moments bare a pretty startling resemblance to some that are occurring right now. Everything old is new again. And we just can’t seem to erect a structure that benefits from the collective intellect. Like a newborn, and their subsequent milestones, the collective memory is erased to make use of, or more likely, to protect itself from those ever damaging tides.