The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker

Nora got sucked into this situation due to her own stupidity, she gets enchanted by a mysterious woman and her band of oddly-named friends, and it is a literal whirlwind. I thought this would be a magical book, a was, but it never captured my imagination, it was never a pleasure to read, it was never magical, it never gave me the sense of emotion of anything except 'Dear god, when will this book be over?' Draining her glass, she poured herself another.'Now here is where the book deviates from my expectations.

She poured herself a drink, ice cubes chiming in her glass, and took a long swallow. Anything cool and liquid was fine with her. Coming closer, she saw it was full of some drink that looked like cranberry juice or iced Red Zinger or even cherry Kool-Aid. 'The pitcher, dewy with condensation, drew Nora’s attention. She didn't get sucked into some mysterious magical portal, she trespasses onto a property and literally drinks the fucking Kool-Aid.

'Nora braced herself, trying as always to find Naomi’s presence empowering instead of terrifying.Last fall, in a single semester, she had produced both baby and a book on sexual ambiguity in Dickens.'So topping off this disastrous weekend, Nora wanders off, and that's where the idiocy and madness (not to mention boredom) begins. Nora also nurses some pretty harsh, antagonistic attitude towards her very competent mentor, who seems to have it all together. To his other girlfriend, who is more interesting and more intelligent (and to be honest, I completely sympathized with the boyfriend). Her brilliant, charismatic, distant (and long-distance) boyfriend also chooses this particular time to announce that he's getting married.but not to her. She knowingly chose a topic that's been plowed over and over and over by thousands of other candidates, and is now shocked, utterly SHOCKED, I tell you, that she's stuck without a viable idea on which to write. She's an English Ph.D candidate whose dissertation is coming undone, or rather.un-Donne. When we meet her, Nora is a woman with #firstworldproblems up the yin yang. For one thing, we're led to believe that our heroine is a thinking woman.

My anger-fueled metaphor would involve something to the likes of a putrefying corpse, a regurgitated meal, and a honey badger.

Sure, they're both parts of the same animal's internal organs, but in one situation you're eating lovely, unctuous, rich goodness, and in the other you're just eating mostly digested crap.Ĭonsidering I really liked The Magicians, and that I absolutely loved Pride & Prejudice, you don't even want to hear me make a metaphor on this book's supposed similarity to the aforementioned book. To say this book is like Lev Grossman's The Magicians is like saying eating foie gras is like eating a rectum.

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker