The Magick Bookshop

by Kala Trobe

2005 Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR) Winner for Best Visionary Fiction Book! In the heart of Oxford, England, sits Malynowsky's Bookshop, the sort of place that makes people go "oooh" as soon as they step into it. Its books both lure and intimidate, and the clientele come to browse in the knowledge that their needs will be met and their privacy respected. Inside, the myths re-enact themselves daily among the customers, employees, and the books themselves.

This collection of six short stories takes you inside this little world of mystery, real magick, and moral lessons. Meet Paul Magwitch, possessed by the spirit of a young girl who compels him to buy expensive things he does not need or want; the Witch in the City, who ekes out a living reading Tarot for strangers in the park; and Eurydice, a shop employee who tragically becomes the victim of a customer's magical attack.

Genres: Fiction, Magic, Fantasy, Witchcraft, Urban Fantasy, Paganism, Occult

240 pages, Paperback

Published May 8, 2004

Reviews

[Christy Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most interesting thing about the book is that it uses real-world practices of magick in realistic situations. For someone who is even partially versed in the occult it is a fun read and not at all dumbed down.

I wish the stories weren't so insular, it would have been better if there was an over-all plot.

[Shandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be, in turns, aggravating and enthralling. Some parts of it I really enjoyed, some parts dragged on, and I nearly put it down. I tend to be a bit put off when an author casts themselves as the narrator. It also made those parts of the book about other people seem too observational (or I wondered how the narrator knew what was going on when she wasn't actually there). I enjoyed the language of the book overall - I had no doubts about the author's grasp of language and advanced vocabulary. The book isn't really a novel - more a collection of short stories, all centered around the bookstore. It's also rife with Kabbalah references, some of which definitely went over my head. I am inclined to try another of the author's books, as she was highly recommended to me, and I liked this book overall.

[Julianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with other reviewers that the quality is uneven. A couple of the stories I would have given five stars to, but the narration doesn't seem very well controlled. We don't find out enough about the narrator's life for it to work fully in the memoir style, I often thought that other characters would make more appropriate narrators for the short stories than the author, who is too distant and observational for them to be truly emotionally involving. The best pieces were probably the two stories in which the narrator is reading a colleague's journal, because that narrator is the true centre of them.

I enjoyed the bookshop setting but I'm a lot less into mystical/spiritual things than I used to be, I probably would have adored this book when I was a teenager.

[Rand]

A lively exploration of ancient mythos in the context of Oxford in the 1990s. Some of the longer stories failed to sustain my interest until their climax, however, this book was an enjoyable first exposure to the Qabalah et al.

Favorite line: It was not love at first sight because they both knew, as yet tacitly, that this was their past as well as their future.

[Constantin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book.

Had too high expectations probably.... when  you see a book with occult stories and the word magick on the cover, with a K... the last thing you expect is a theistic book full of catholicism and a wicca-wanna-be-magickian perspective and "so mote it be" rituals....
The stories are quite dull, mundane and not that imaginative. They feel a bit pointless to be  honest and the characters are just not that interesting.
In the end, I had to put it down cos I could not stand to read another tedious story. (3rd book I put down in my life)

I believe I give it 2 stars solely  because of my love for books and the great descriptions of the bookshops and the bindings that made me envision myself working there.

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title and cover drew me in. It started off well but didn't grab me like I hoped it would. An odd book really. Real life masquerading as fictional stories? A novel masquerading as short stories? Only the author or perhaps her higher self has any idea of that. Not a book for me in the end.

[Maddy Kennewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has the most beautiful poetic prose I have ever had the honour to read. The words invoked such strong sensory reactions, and once I opened the book I had to stay until the end.

[Casie Blevins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing.

[Rosemary Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qabalistic Tales from a Masterful Storyteller
Storytelling, a true art, instructs as well as entertains. In The Magick Bookshop, Kala Trobe takes us to a place that exists in just about everyone’s imagination – a mystic archive that turns everyday experiences into psychic morality plays.
Trobe takes us through the narrow aisles of an antiquarian book seller’s establishment, where we easily come under the spell of yellowed manuscripts emanating the dust of epochs and leather-bound volumes that reflect the patina of a lost age. Along the way, we learn the arcane language of the bibliophile – dice calf bindings, vellum pages, and medieval folios “glued together by time.”
We also learn that the bookshop, haunted by the friendly spirits of its antecedents, inadvertently draws the academic, the dilettante, and a variety of hesitant souls into the ambiguous aura of its classical and occult tomes. Here, they face the nemesis of their strivings (and failings) in a series of cleverly drawn vignettes that reflect the Qabalistic path of the shop’s proprietor, the mysterious Mr. Malynowsky.
Nor could one be so less insightful as to miss the morals that are woven into these stories. Hauntings arise from greed, possession troubles the heretic. Even the most metaphysically informed must face the knotty problems of everyday existence – love, jealousy, family conflict, and the abuses that beset modern living. These realities are not neglected in The Magick Bookshop, but they are dispatched with the application of the magical wisdom accumulated on its shelves.
Not since Dion Fortune has an occult writer drawn such colorful players from the realm of invention into the world of mundane circumstances. And the Magick Bookshop is a place we’d like to return to for more adventures. Hopefully, an imaginative sequel may in the offing and deeper secrets about its patrons will be disclosed. Curiously though, this extraordinary archive may exist in actuality – the author is known to frequent a curiously similar habitat in London’s Trafalgar Square, where she lifts the veil of the mysteries for her Tarot clients on a regular basis.

[Vivienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book given the subject matter and the fact the author and I share many areas of common interest.

However, I found it somewhat disappointing. The quality of the stories was quite uneven - some of them being too fantastic and others too mundane.

I thought it rather a mistake on the part of the author to cast herself as the main character even if in real life she'd worked in such a bookshop. It made it seem a memoir rather than fiction.

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't work happily through this at all - the author is the protagonist so it wavers through being memoir one minute and a weak fiction the next. Her use of language is at times lovely but this is at the cost of sense; a good parallel would be the Blavatsky meanderings.

[Simon Vigneault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kala Trobe is a rare find. Everything I've read by her is first rate, fiction and nonfiction alike.