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Review of Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber

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Five Star Book Review

Stephanie Garber, Alchemy of Secrets.

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work, but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

I am a fan of Stephanie Garber’s Caraval and Once Upon a Broken Heart series with their magical worlds, incredible but dark magic, and dangerous relationships. Alchemy of Secrets is her initial adult novel and while it still retains the magical elements of her other writing, the world is contemporary Los Angeles. For much of the story the magical elements are more subdued than her previous young adult novels. Her description of an early moment of the story could apply to the book in general:

It almost felt like magic. Not big, miraculous magic but the simple magic of timeless things. Of two-dollar bills and handwritten letters, typewriters and rotary phones. (9)

There are certainly times where big, miraculous magic is also a part of this story, but most of the story feels like this simple magic of timeless things. She has a phenomenal gift of describing places in the book as she leads you on this treasure hunt full of unreliable allies and lost knowledge. Sometimes it feels like you as a reader are impacted by the devil’s ability to make a character forget in the story and yet, as you begin to know the protagonist’s, Holland St. James’s, backstory it becomes woven into her life-or-death search for the Alchemical Heart.

Stephanie Garber’s work is comfort reading for me because it makes me believe and feel and wonder with the characters. In her words, “What is magic, if not something that makes you believe and feel and wonder?” (237) To ape the mysterious professor at the beginning of the book, “I came to this book because of her earlier stories and now she has told me another one.” There are still young adult elements to the story, but the protagonist is still young, naïve, and inexperienced and pulled by characters with a lot more experience in the magical side of the world she has sought but not truly encountered before the beginning of the story. The writing is beautiful, almost magical and the treasure hunt is an enjoyable trek through the unique architecture of Los Angeles.

Review of Possession by A. S. Byatt

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 73: Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

S. Byatt’s Possession is exactly the type of treasure I hoped to discover when I embarked on reading through the Time Magazine top 100 novel list, a truly gorgeous work in its use of the English language, method of telling the story, and its truly rich characters. There were several times I would stop and remark how beautiful a poem, letter, or dialogue was. I could identify with almost all the characters in this book and see a portion of myself reflected in each of them. It is a novel of stories within stories that is often told by the imagined writing and correspondence between the characters. It begins when Roland Mitchell, an underemployed scholar of the fictional poet Randolph Henry Ash, discovers in a volume Ash used two drafts of a letter to an unknown woman. Roland retains the letter and begins his quest to discover who this unknown woman is and to see if their relationship, whatever it may be, sheds any light on the work of Ash. Once his investigation leads him to the poet Christabel LaMott he is introduced to Maud Bailey, a feminist scholar with a keen interest in LaMott both as a writer and as a distant relative. Together they discover a collection of letters between these two poets which leads them into a re-evaluation of the lives of both the poets the study and themselves as they both become captured in this quest to uncover the story of this previously unknown but highly impactful relationship. Although Roland and Maud have not published their discovery, rumors begin which also brings Maud’s former lover and scholar Fergus Wolf, English Ash scholar and Roland’s boss James Blackadder, American Ash scholar and collector Mortimer Cropper, American feminist and Cristabel LaMott scholar Leonora Stern, and a scholar who studied Ellen Ash, Randolph’s wife, Beatrice Nest into the pursuit of the correspondence, Maud and Roland who disappear for a time, and the truth of this previously unknown relationship.

Possession is a phenomenal story, but the creation of the poetry of both Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMott as well as a beautiful set of letters between them is incredible. This was a joy to read. The narration evoked a rich sense of the people and the landscapes they encountered. Some of the best use of descriptive language I have ever read. The correspondence was frequently as poetic as the actual poems created and it made me wish I could read more of both poets. There were surprises all the way to the end of the book and I was awestruck with this incredible piece of literary artwork. I loved this book.