Rating: 4.5 out of 5 starsGenre: Fiction with a little fantasyAge Recommended: 12 and upThis story was a little creepy at times but overall it was great. It was set in the time of WWII and I really liked that the author combined the idea of witchcraft with WWII, making it seem as if they were related.Read below to see my interview of the author, Lisa Goldstein.The Red Magician–WWII has begun.Kicsi is a young girl who lives in a rural village. One night, a man named Voros comes to her village, and speaks of death and destruction coming soon. Kicsi believes him and together they try to protect the village. Kicsi discovers that Voros is a magician after he saves someone’s life.However, the local rabbi says that this is all garbage and that he is the real magician, not Voros. The two of them have a battle and Voros ends up disappearing after a spell gone wrong causes him to get hurt.Kicsi realizes that she has fallen in love with Voros and cannot bear to see him go.Soon after, Nazis come to Kicsi’s village and take her family to a concentration camp. Kicsi is separated from her family, faces a lot of adversity and falls ill . Miraculously, Kicsi survives long enough to meet Voros again. He takes care of Kicsi but she is still sick and may not be able to pull through. The rabbi also challenges Voros to a final combat…Will Kicsi survive? Will Voros win?–Here is my interview with the author, Lisa Goldstein. (Thank you for answering my questions, Ms. Goldstein!)Q: When did you start writing?A: I wrote all my life, probably soon after I learned to read. But I startedseriously writing, actually sitting down and working every day, aroundwhen I graduated college. Part of that was realizing that I had to get ajob soon, and that if I was going to be a writer, now was the time to getto work.Q: Who is your favorite character in the Red Magician?A: That’s a hard one. I like both Kicsi and Voros, Kicsi because she’s sofamiliar to me and Voros because I wrote him to be slightly distant andmysterious. I actually think the two characters work best together, acombination of innocence and knowledge.Q: Who inspired you to write?A: I had a babysitter when I was a kid who had known several writers,including John Steinbeck, and her talking about them made me realize thatwriters were actual people, and that maybe I could write a book too. Shealso encouraged me to write, something no one had ever done before. Idedicated The Red Magician partly to her, and, amazingly, she lived longenough to see it (she was over a hundred when she died).As for writing fantasy, I was very inspired by Ursula Le Guin. Shestarted at a time when people still said women couldn’t write sciencefiction, and it was terrific to find someone who not only wrote it but whowrote it better than anyone else around.Q: What is your favorite book?A: Not sure if this is about my favorite of my own books or my favorite bookin general — but since I don’t like picking a favorite among my books I’mgoing to answer the second. There are several books I keep coming back toand rereading. One of them is _Little, Big_ by John Crowley, which is abrilliant history of a family in New York living with magic. I think ofit as sort of _A Hundred Years of Solitude_ set in the United States.Another is _Possession_ by A.S. Byatt, which moves between two stories,one about the relationship between two writers in Victorian times and theother about two contemporary academics trying to learn the truth aboutthem. It jumps back and forth in time, making connections between the twosets of characters and their writings and histories. It isn’t fantasy,but one of the writers tells terrific stories about ghosts and fairy talesand a woman who turns into a serpent.Q: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?A: Mostly that you have to sit down and write. Make time to do it every day,or, if you don’t have time for this, at least several times a week. Andread a lot, from every genre, and try to learn from the good stuff and tosee where the bad stuff goes wrong.
A few weeks ago I saw the book featured on Netgalley. It has been republished as an ebook by the excellent Open Road Media. My interest was piqued by the description and I requested a review copy. I am glad I did. For those of you who are interested in the debate about where fantasy begins and magic realism ends this is definitely a book to ponder. Yes, there are straight fantasy scenes showing the magician's duels with the rabbi which could be in a Peter Jackson movie, but there is also a historical reality about the book, a reality which was more horrendous than anything that can be dreamed up by any horror writer. The chapters depicting Kicsi's experience in the death camps are powerfully accurate. Lisa Goldstein, a daughter of two Holocaust survivors, asks some awkward questions about the role of magic in modern Europe.The key thing to note is that the magic fails. The magician can foresee the impending holocaust but can do nothing about it. He fails to persuade the Jewish residents to flee. The magician fails to create a golem to protect the little town where Kicsi lives. Although he is prevented from doing so by the Rabbi, there is an underlying question - could the magician ever have succeeded, was the old magic powerless in the face of the very real terror of the Nazi machine?The Prague Golem legend has always struck me as tragic. The Golem was created to protect the Jewish community and was/is meant to be sleeping in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue waiting, like Arthur and his knights, the call to rise up at times of the greatest danger. But when that danger came, the giant in the attic did not stir.The magic in magic realism is often that of the underclass, the oppressed, the disenfranchised. It gives power to the powerless. For that reason there is an important strand of magic realism, which draws on the ancient beliefs of the Jewish people. In the camp there are tales among the detainees of a red-haired man and people disappearing from the camp. Goldstein does not make clear if this is wishful thinking and the "escapees" have actually been killed. After the war Kicsi is found by the magician among the dying and physically recovers. But her spirit does not revive and she suffers from survivors' guilt. She accompanies the magician on a journey back to her home town and another duel between the two men. That process brings her back to life. As a book for teenagers I think The Red Magician would work particularly well, although it is suitable for adults too. The book is an excellent short read and I thank Open Road Media for making it available.I received this book free from the publisher via Netgalley in return for a fair review.This review first appeared on the Magic Realism Books Blog, where I review a magic realism book a week
What do You think about The Red Magician (1995)?
(Full review here: http://bibliotropic.net/2014/10/21/th...)The Red Magician is an excellent read and doesn’t suffer from being so short the way some novellas do. I finished this book not wishing it could have been expanded into something longer and more detailed, but instead appreciating just how much could be crammed into so short a space without losing anything in the process. Goldstein takes the wide-reaching and the large-scale and brings them down to wonderfully human levels. Despite being a story about magic during World War 2, this isn’t a wish-fulfillment story about spells stopping Hitler, or good triumphing simply because good should triumph. It’s a story about life, the good and the bad. It’s a story about discovery and survival and recovery. Originally published in 1982, 2 years before I was even born, time has not spoiled this story, and it’s just as good to read now as it was then. Do yourself a favour and spend an afternoon delving into The Red Magician. It’s an excellent story, with fantastic commentary on humanity and religion, and one that I know with certainty that I’m going to read at least once more.
—Bibliotropic
This book reads like a bad translation of an already problematic book. Awkward dialogue, poorly constructed plot, flat characters, and events and choices that are unbelievable within the context of the story. It's an example of either 1) not enough revision or 2) simply not giving the reader enough credit. It seems to overlook the fact that all good stories must contain certain elements and be free of others--you can't just throw a series of scenes together, haphazardly join them, and present them as a satisfying read. Characters must be likeable, their actions must fit their personalities and the environment, the dialogue must be coherent and provide necessary information, and each event should occur to drive the story forward. Some fantasy is strong in its attention to detail, but this one doesn't have any, even though it pulls from a much-documented time in history. Even fantasy should seem real, and nothing in this book does--the town Kicsi lives in doesn't even have a name. Disappointing.
—Kerry
The Red MagicianFairy tale? Magical realism? Allegory? Jewish fantasy? Holocaust story?All are true. Voros, the Red Magician, foresees the Holocaust and tries to warn people, but he cannot be specific, and the idea of leaving their ordinary lives to flee a vague and unbelievable danger is beyond the scope of most people.Kisci is a young girl in one of the villages, and she becomes very attached to Voros and tries to aid him. But a confrontation with a stubborn and misguided magical Rabbi ends with Voros moving on.Things in the village proceed for a few years, but eventually the Germans arrive and the villagers who survive end up in the camps. Kisci barely survives until the end of the war, but Voros finds her and nurses her back to health. The two have one more journey to make.A tale of faith and the lack of faith, of vengeance and of guilt, of Jewish mysticism, magic, and the harsh realities of Holocaust.I can't say I loved it, but The Red Magician was provocative. I've never been entirely comfortable with magical realism-- it always leaves me with a kind of dissonance and that is certainly true in this case. "Lisa Goldstein has published ten novels and dozens of short stories under her own name and two fantasy novels under the pseudonym Isabel Glass. Her most recent novel is The Uncertain Places, which won the Mythopoeic Award. Goldstein received the National Book Award for The Red Magician."NetGalley/Open Road MediaMagical Realism/Fantasy. Originally published in 1982; new publication Oct. 21, 2014. Print length: 144 pages.
—Jen
