Lessons in magic and disaster / Charlie Jane Anders.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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 the average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, generational trauma, and an esoteric dissertation proposal. 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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Jamie is a PhD candidate teaching and researching for a dissertation on 18th-century literature. She is also navigating the grief of losing her mother, Mae, to cancer as her other mom, Serena, hides from the world. In hopes of getting Serena to come out of her seclusion, Jamie reveals that she is a witch and begins to teach her mother how to cast the spells Jamie has used since she was young. However, the pains of the past, both from the death of Mae and the implosion of her career, set Serena on a path of disastrous magic. Now Jamie must somehow divert Serena's vengeful spells and try to save her own career and relationship before she loses everyone she loves. The story of Mae and Serena's relationship is told from the perspective of the past, while excerpts from Jamie's reading as she conducts research give context to the magic and disasters of everyone's stories. VERDICT Anders's (The City in the Middle of the Night) latest is 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.--Kristi Chadwick

Publishers Weekly Review

Nebula Award winner Anders (All the Birds in the Sky) brings gentle humor and a clear-eyed sense of justice to this lovely standalone contemporary fantasy. Literature grad student Jamie Sandthorne has a secret. She doesn't fully know how it works and can't think about it too much, but for years she has quietly been practicing witchcraft. Years after the death of her mother Mae, Jamie decides to share this gift with Serena, her surviving mother, who's still trapped in a spiral of grief. However, fierce, driven former lawyer Serena sees magic not as a gift but a weapon, and ropes Jamie into a mission of revenge. Anders lets the unintended consequences of this revenge quest unfold alongside a clever framing narrative centered on a pair of 18th-century women novelists and uses the dual plots to tease out a skillful commentary on social precarity and the way vulnerable people trying to make a difference can become casualties in the culture war. 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. Agent: Russ Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh. (Aug.)

Booklist Review

Jamie, a queer academic writing a dissertation about eighteenth-century women writers, is worried about her mother Serena. Ever since Jamie's other mother, Mae, died, Serena has holed up in a one-bedroom schoolhouse, a mess of grief and guilt. So Jamie makes a decision: She'll introduce her mother to the magic of offerings and desire that she's been able to use since she was a teen. But it takes no time at all before Serena is pressing up against all the known and unknown limitations of magic, and skirting ethical questions besides. To stop her mother, Jamie will have to figure out the magic she's always guessed at--and confront the deep-seated trauma and issues both she and her mother have kept buried. Anders (Even Greater Mistakes, 2021) crafts an intriguing novel rooted more in the politics of one queer family--two queer women and their trans daughter--than the delicate magic that floats through the plot. The mother-daughter story about honesty, guilt, and love is complex and richly emotional. Fans of Alice Hoffman's work will enjoy.

Kirkus Book Review

Can magic solve all your problems? Unlikely, says this thoughtful, impactful work of fantasy. Jamie, a trans graduate student, needs to find that piece of evidence that will give direction to her Ph.D. dissertation about 18th-century female authors, even as her university threatens to pull her funding and she faces misogyny and transphobia every day in the classes she teaches. She's also trying to reconnect with her mother, Serena, who is suffering from a crippling depression stemming from the long-ago death of her wife, Mae, and the ruin of her career as a social justice activist by the leader of a right-wing smear group. So Jamie shares something with Serena that she hasn't even shared with her nonbinary spouse, Ro: Jamie can do magic. She performs rituals that she hopes will make her small desires real in the world. Serena takes to this practice, but almost immediately seeks to enact larger, angrier spells, with effects that neither she nor Jamie can anticipate or control, profoundly disrupting both of their lives. This compact novel is about many things: a literary treasure hunt that strongly recalls A.S. Byatt'sPossession; the struggle to negotiate obligations to parents, spouses, and oneself; moving forward from grief; and a self-taught witch's fraught journey toward understanding her own magic. But underlying everything is this profound question: How do minority groups (in this case, specifically, those in the LGBTQ+ community) fight effectively and ethically against the tolerance of intolerance? Wouldn't it be wonderful to magically smite the powerful figures who discriminate, disenfranchise, and endanger the vulnerable through indifference or cruelty? Unfortunately, it's never that easy, not in real life and not in fiction. Much to ponder, much to cry over and rage against, much to appreciate. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.