Mister Magic by Kiersten White
The terror of not being able to remember your own past
Val has lived on the ranch all her life. It’s safe there. At least, that’s what her father tells her.
He’s always been very protective of her. He’s not only sheltered her from the real world (TV, travel…), he’s hidden her from it. She’s been brought up to believe that the world beyond the ranch is dangerous, and that in order to remain safe, she must stay there, stay hidden.
That’s simply all that Val has ever known. Even as she’s grown into a capable young woman who enjoys working with children and masterfully manages their wealthy parents. She doesn’t question her father’s attitude to the world. She accepts it.
And then her father dies. Suddenly, her world is thrown into disarray, and she begins to wonder what exactly her father was protecting her from. A suspicion starts to itch that they were hiding from something in their past, something bad they — or she — had done.
Sure enough, Val soon discovers that she has an unremembered history from before her exile to the ranch: three men appear on her doorstep on the day of her father’s funeral and tell her that her mother is still alive, that she has a sister she never realized existed, and that she used to co-star with them on an archaic children’s TV show called Mister Magic…
Mister Magic… It appears to be an example of the Mandela Effect; a nostalgic memory that a generation shares even though there’s no tangible proof it actually existed.
It’d be crazy to leave the ranch now, the one place in the world her father insisted she was safe and go with these strangers who offer to take her to reunite with her long-lost mother, but Val feels she must go in order to learn the truth about herself. So she goes with them into the great unknown.
Mister Magic is perhaps best described as existential horror. It plays with the idea of forgotten truths and the scary notion that one might not even know their real self. On top of that, there’s the potential threat of people who claim to know Val from before she went into hiding and whether they, or others, or anyone, can really be trusted.
And through it all there’s that old Mister Magic TV show that seemingly everyone half-remembers but of which there is no record, and which no-one completely agrees on. Was Mister Magic an actor, a puppet, or something else?
White does a great job of creating an enduring sense of chilling unease throughout the majority of this book. Eighty percent of the novel is this great foreboding sense of dread that something terrible is going to happen, that the other shoe will drop, and that some unimaginable horror is about to be unleased…
Is there a payoff?
Yes, but your mileage will vary. If you’re expecting outright horror, gore, and devastation, it’s fair to say you’ll be disappointed.
If, on the other hand, you’ve become sufficiently invested in the characters and their journey by that point in the story, you will probably agree it is at least a thematically and emotionally appropriate climax, even if not entirely satisfying.
Personally, the denouement of Mister Magic wasn’t what I’d hoped for (SPOILERS: it verges into alternate dimension territory — something I’m rarely a fan of because I feel it undercuts the stakes any time you deal with something that is by definition not reality), but it remains wholly appropriate to the story the author wanted to tell.
Subjective shortcomings aside, Mister Magic is a chilling read that draws you in and gets under your skin — and it deals with sober, real world issues in a masterful way, making this book worthy of the title of elevated horror… for all the good and bad that tag implies.