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by Charlie Jane Anders
In the vein of Alice Hoffman and Charlie Jane Anders's own All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic.
A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic—with very unexpected results—in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.
Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.
Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.
Jamie's busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.
Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.
"[A] thoughtful, impactful work of fantasy...Much to ponder, much to cry over and rage against, much to appreciate." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A breathtaking work of magic, grief, and love. The vulnerable depiction of relationships and challenges within queer and trans communities is heart-wrenching but still reflects hope and optimism throughout." —Library Journal (starred review)
"With a lovably messy trans protagonist and a deep, tender-hearted exploration of grief, guilt, and the difficulty of asking for the things one wants, this is perfect for seasoned readers of queer feminist speculative fiction looking for a cozy escape that still challenges." —Publishers Weekly
"Lessons in Magic and Disaster features…the magic…of human connection, and readers will be richer for the experience." —Shelf Awareness
"A novel that shimmers with fervent imagination and astute observation, Lessons in Magic and Disaster expertly journeys the uncanny valley between the seduction of witchcraft and the magic of everyday life." ―Meredith Talusan, author of Fairest
"Lessons in Magic and Disaster is a hymn to queer love, joy, and persistence. The song of resistance and mutual care echoes through this novel just as our trauma and the community we build to survive it echoes through the generations, reminding us: we have always been here; we will always take care of each other. A book for our times―and for all the times before this." ―Nicola Griffith, author of Spear
This information about Lessons in Magic and Disaster was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster. Her other novels include All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night and the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she's currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
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