Books › Magic for beginners
Magic for beginners
352 pages
A surreal, pop-culture-infused fever dream where the mundane and the magical bleed seamlessly into one another.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like stepping into a familiar room only to realize the furniture is floating and the television is broadcasting your own dreams. It moves at a steady, hypnotic pace, wrapping you in an atmosphere that is simultaneously nostalgic and deeply uncanny. The prose is deceptively casual, grounding ghosts, zombies, and magical television shows in the mundane realities of suburban living rooms. You are constantly kept off-balance by a tone that shifts effortlessly from deadpan comedy to creeping dread, often within the same sentence. It is an experience of profound disorientation that somehow yields startling emotional truths. This is a perfect match for readers who delight in slipstream fiction, where dream logic reigns and the ordinary world is peeled back to reveal something strange, beautiful, and slightly terrifying.
- Mood
- dreamlike
- uncanny
- nostalgic
- eerie
- Tone
- deadpan
- wry
- surreal
- playful
- melancholic
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- domestic surrealism · obsession and fandom · the intrusion of the bizarre · coming of age · the weight of memory
- The writing
- Deceptively conversational and grounded, anchoring wild, surreal concepts in sharp, everyday details.
- The arc
- Moves from disorienting curiosity through moments of unexpected tenderness, ending in a lingering sense of wonder and slight unease.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love slipstream fiction, pop culture infused with magic, and stories that operate on dream logic.
Content notes
- grief
- mild horror elements
- existential dread
- death
About the book
All-new collection of magical stories from slapstick comedy to Gothic horror.
Description from Open Library.
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