Magical Thinking: True Stories

How it reads

Magical Thinking: True Stories is memoir (personal essay memoir, specifically), and its dominant mood is funny. The humour is the point, not garnish. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in a big city setting, in the recent past, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are family, identity and loss and grief. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 304 pages it's a quick read. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.