Echo Brown (1984–2023)

Echo's mother is a wizard - she can slow down time, pull herself out of her body and watch events from the ceiling, and put up a shell around herself to keep bad things from getting in. Echo has long wondered at and admired her mother's abilities, and now she begins to realize that she may be a wizard, too. But those magical abilities come with an awareness of the darkness in the world, too, and sets her apart from those around her.

At the start, I thought I would love this one, when it show more seemed the mother was teaching her daughter coping mechanisms through the language of magic and using wizardry as a metaphor for building a strength that can carry you through pain. But then it became clear that the magic isn't just metaphorical here, and then things got weird. In general I'm not a fan of magical realism. It needs to be *very* well done to work at all; otherwise it tends to feel like the author plopped some magic down into their story without explanation or logic, and it always feels jarring and clunky and it takes away from the narrative rather than enhances it. I felt this here, so much so that the story Brown is telling - which is fascinating and otherwise nicely done - suffers to the point of nearly unraveling. There were moments when the magic comes into the plot that really didn't make sense at all to me, as in I honestly lost the thread of the logic of the story for significant chunks of the book. Maybe it would have been easier to follow had I read a print copy and not listened to the audio version, but even so, the magical realism just wasn't woven into the story well enough to work for me. show less

This annoyed me initially because it seems to be both fiction and memoir and I was all, "Pick one dammit!" But I really enjoyed it so fuck classification.

Wow. Just. Wow.

Brown's story is just so powerful. I love the stylistic choices of going back and forth between moments of time. And I know this is an autobiography, but the magic just feels so real and beautiful. Thank you, Echo Brown, for sharing your story with all the ups and downs. You are a powerful wizard, and I honor you.

Gr 9 Up—Echo is a poor Black teenage wizard in a world that is not set up for her success. She narrates her story of
harnessing her powers and carving out space for herself in the world. This novel is packed with magical realism,
sharp observations, and revelations about addiction, depression, race, sexual abuse, and class that unfurl slowly
and complicate one another. Readers will be gutted, then changed.