#levgrossman

I've completed my quest and gathered all seven keys.

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Summary

Lev Grossman’s “The Girl in the Mirror” is about Plum, a student at Brakebills (a secret school of magic in New York), and her League of Extraordinary Ladies. Ok, their organization is just called the League, but I think there’s a missed opportunity there. They devise a plan to teach another student, Wharton, a lesson. Everything goes smoothly until it comes time for Plum’s part. Will the League succeed in their mission? Will Plum be able to complete her quest? More importantly, will she survive?

Stats

Author: Male

POV: Female

Dangerous woman?: Yes

Thoughts and Opinions

I’m already a fan of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, which is also set at Brakebills, so maybe I’m inclined to look favorably on his offering to the Dangerous Women anthology. Or maybe “The Girl in the Mirror” is just good on its own merits.

“The Girl in the Mirror” is one of the shortest stories in the anthology and it also happens to be one of the best. You can tell that Grossman spent time whittling this story down to perfection. And if he didn’t, bless his brilliant heart. The characters are clearly defined in a short amount of time. I would like to hear a bit more from the other members of the League but I don’t feel cheated. In the short amount of time we spend with them, Grossman shows us who these “side” characters are and makes them feel like real people.

Grossman explores the Brakebills world only as much as the story requires. You’ll find no overly long expositions here. It’s tied loosely to The Magicians, so if you’re curious about the world there are other books you can pick up. It’s a precarious deed to connect a standalone story to a larger world without expecting the reader to know about the characters and events from the existing texts. Even more difficult (as we witnessed in “Bombshells”) is avoiding too much reliance on those characters and events. Grossman succeeds where others fail. Only one of The Magicians main characters is recognizable (a couple side characters are mentioned) and while his role is important his presence in the story is brief. The majority of the time is spent on Plum and her world. It’s really quite beautiful. Seriously. I hope one day I can be as skilled as Lev Grossman.

It’s a fun, satisfying heist story with a perfect fucking ending. The ending tastes like Rioja I had in Spain daily (and I swear doesn’t taste as good here, but never-mind that.) Plus, we know how I feel about heist stories.

Writer’s Loot

Like “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” (link to it), there’s so much in “The Girl in the Mirror” that I want/need to mimic. There’s something about Grossman’s Brakebills world that is just so fucking cool to me. The way he names spells so they sound legitimate to my non-magical ears. His brief but complex descriptions of characters. Ugh. EVERYBODY JUST READ IT AND DO EVERYTHING. Ok, that’s plagiarism, so don’t do that. Let’s take a beat.

Grossman writes with this poignant mixture of tragedy, wonder, and humor that touches you without you noticing at first. It’s sentences like this:

Because what were magicians if not Romantics—dreamers who dreamed so passionately and urgently and brokenheartedly that reality itself couldn’t take it, and cracked under the strain like an old mirror?

And this:

And like a few of the books in the Brakebills library, they weren’t quiet or inanimate. They poked themselves out at her from the shelves as she crawled past as if they were inviting her to open them and read, or daring her to, or begging her. A couple of them actually jabbed her in the ribs. They must not get a lot of visitors, she thought.

So, besides everything, it’s that wonderful concoction that I’m taking away as homework (and you should too). To be able to tell your story, to mince no words but “waste” none, to include hardship, wonder, and humor all balanced within the story so that the unreal feels real. That’s something worth studying.