"Mister Magic" Is A Interesting Fever Dream About The Past

Mixing nostalgia, horror and mystery, “Mister Magic” by Kristen White is a bit of a fever dream. The idea that you can block such a big part of your life from your memory is a scary but plausible thought, and even more scary is the part of your life that you blocked from your mind is shared by others. The story centers around a woman named Val, who lives on a ranch and teaches children horseback riding lessons. When her father passes, she goes to the funeral and meets a mysterious group of people around her own age. They seem to know her, but she doesn’t know them. They tell them that as a child, she was on a television show with them. Yet, she has no recollection of this. The name of the show was “Mister Magic” and it was a children’s program.

She joins them in a mysterious town in Utah, where they are doing a reunion interview with a podcast host, but even the podcast host is mysterious. The podcast host only talks with them through a microphone, and they never see her face to face. The show they were on is also very mysterious. The show is fondly remembered by the kids who watched it, but there is no footage available anywhere anymore. The show seems to exist in the memories of the kids who watched it, and that’s it. The novel has internet posts between chapters of the book, with adults and lost media hunters looking for footage of the show but coming to no avail.

The reason Val doesn’t remember the show is she somehow has something to do with what ended it. Yet, she doesn’t remember and her fellow former cast members, while nice to her, do not seem to want to tell her exactly what she did. There’s a lot of commentary in this novel about the problems with becoming consumed with the past, whether it’s wanting to go back or simply obsessing over a children’s show which comforted you as a kid watching it. As my generation gets older, there’s something to be said for that. However, that’s not just my generation. That’s something every generation goes through.

White’s writing is eerie and interesting, and one gets the sense this TV show isn’t a TV show, but something else entirely. A metaphor for parts of our childhood we look back on fondly but tend to look at through rose-colored glasses.

A couple years ago, I read Kristen White’s horror novel “Hide”, which dealt with similar themes as “Mister Magic”, which is mainly the disappointments of growing up and a system which takes advantage of that. However, while that novel dealt with young adults getting desperate to get their lives started, “Mister Magic” deals with young adults looking back on the more mysterious parts of their own childhoods.

The mystery of the novel deepens and deepens as the story goes on. White has a knack for tapping into the anxieties of young adults, while figuring out what outside forces are shaping them. She did this in both “Mister Magic” and “Hide”, but while “Hide” looks at the present, “Mister Magic” informs us on how our past shapes our future.

This book is an unusual book that took me to different places and is a somewhat hard book to review because of its unusual topic. However, I think it’s well worth reading especially for a generation that is looking back on what is now nostalgia.