Mistification

by Kaaron Warren

Marvo is a stage magician. His magic is real. Marvo grows up without knowing his parents, without knowing his heritage, without knowing much about life.The magicians have always been with us, since the beginning of civilisation. They fill our heads with the mist, keeping us from witnessing the stark reality of existence. But are things so bad that Marvo will bring it down on all of us, forever? Marvo begins to understand those around him, and his place in the world; he discovers that his remarkable powers can be put to good, or to evil. He only has to choose... FILE Horror Sleight of Hand / Find the Lady / All is Illusion / Death Rules]

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Urban Fantasy, Magic

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

I wanted to be a writer from a very young age, and wrote my first proper short story at 14. I also wrote a novel that year, called “Skin Deep”‘, which I really need to type up.

I started sending stories out when I was about 23, and sold my first one, “White Bed”", in 1993. Since then I’ve sold about 150 short stories, seven short story collections and six novels.

I’m an avid and broad reader but I also like reality TV so don’t always expect intelligent conversation from me.

Reviews

[Isidore · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strange, ambitious, and perplexing book. It begins strongly, with an enthralling account of the hero's grim childhood; then it becomes a grab-bag. About a hundred brief stories are related within the main story, and the relevance of the sub-stories to the primary one is not always evident (by contrast, there was scarcely a redundant line in Warren's splendid first novel, SLIGHTS). Some of the sub-stories are interesting, some are not. The main story is rather uneventful. The narrative tone throughout is detached and remote. There are also scholarly footnotes, appendices, and many digressions (ranging from arcana of superstition to a lengthy description of making bouillabaise) which, frankly, add little of interest. Characterization is sparse: the main characters are not rounded personalities, and seem more like allegorical figures than real people––but if the novel is an allegory, its meaning is elusive.

Although I feel the offbeat structure and style don't work, I can still applaud the author's imagination and daring. This is definitely no potboiler, and it never becomes truly dull. But what spoils the book for me is my revulsion at its apparent "message": that society would fall apart if its members faced reality, and people therefore must be shielded from it with comforting lies; those able to perceive, disseminate, and act upon truth must be murdered or incapacitated. It's the world-view of a religious or political megalomaniac.

Marvo, Warren's main character, goes about secretly altering the lives of others through magic. He does so in accordance with what he feels is fair, or with what is required to further his mission of keeping humanity ignorant of the realities of life. He can be generous to those he likes, but he is also casually sadistic when he comes up against those he dislikes or who oppose his agenda of deception. He is both ruthless and bland, and reminds me of those Nazi bureaucrats who were nice to their friends and regarded themselves as models of rectitude even as they practiced mass deception and killed people. Did Warren really intend that the reader should find him appealing or sympathetic? Unlike SLIGHTS' anti-hero Stevie, he is not made forgivable through pathos or sardonic wit.

On the other hand, perhaps I have missed Warren's point altogether. The novel is nothing if not ambiguous, and sometimes even flippant. At times one can almost believe Marvo is meant to be seen as monstrous––almost. A frustrating and unpleasant book, but not a stupid one.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the first 100 pages and knew it wasn't for me and would be just more of those 100 pages--that is to say, a pile of weird affected nonsense in a vague-ass, purposeless world!

A bit like Brian Evenson in style but with seemingly no point whatsoever. At least to me. Surely a book that will polarise, though, and be loved by others.

I remember reading Warren's novel "Slights" when I was in uni and thinking it was great. And it has a great cover :) I think that's why I picked up this one. Should maybe try another :)

[Tsana Dolichva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mistification by Kaaron Warren is a strange book. I'm not sure what I was expecting — perhaps to be scarred for life as with Slights — but it's not really like any of Warren's other books/stories (that I've read so far). The blurb is a bit misleading.

The misleading thing is that yes, Mistification is Marvo's story. It is, more or less, his life story. But it's also a book about stories. Marvo is driven to understanding the world and people and magic, and he searches for understanding by searching for stories. The book is interspersed with stories that the people he meets throughout his life tell him. Don't get me wrong though, this is not a thinly veiled short story collection. The stories Marvo gathers are short and in a way more like parables (although not in any biblical sense!). For me this made Mistification a difficult book to consume quickly, much like I find anthologies difficult to read straight through. I ended up reading it over the course of several weeks, with breaks to read other books in between. I don't feel that lessened the experience for me, as it might have with another book.

The setting was a bit odd (not in a bad way). Mostly it felt sort of generically non-specific and a bit Australian. If it weren't for a few references to the UK and America being not Marvo's home, I would've guessed it was vaguely British (although he does travel a lot). In fact, the opening put me in mind of somewhere perhaps South American, when a revolution or military coup (or something) had Marvo and his grandmother confined to a large family house. In the end, I could only conclude that Mistification is set nowhere or anywhere.

From a subgenre perspective, Mistification defies classification. It's not horrific in the same way as other Warren books and stories I've read have been, but it's still a bit eerie. Nothing terribly horrible happened (well, not to the main characters anyway), but it was far from a cheery tale. And there was magic, it could've been magical realism if not for the way the existence of magic was stressed. It's also quite literary — character, not plot, driven — and that might not be for everyone. I think it's a book that will be enjoyed much more by people who can appreciate the writing rather than demanding an action-based plot. I liked it, but it's not the kind of book I want to read every day.

One last thing I want to mention is the depth of research on folklore and folk-healing and so forth that evidently went into Mistification. There are five appendices (not required reading to enjoy the novel!) which add background information and small details to the story. And there are footnotes which also add little titbits. (Well, they were endnotes in the ebook edition, formatted quite well from a navigational point of view, but perhaps they're footnotes in the print version? Let me know in the comments if you have a print copy, I'm curious!) Both of these I think made the book easier to dip in and out of. And I'm dying to know how many of the folk-healing and little history snippets were "real". This is another aspect which I enjoyed because it fit well with the style of the book.

Mistification was an interesting read. Rather different to most of the books I read (and review on this blog). I think it has to be approached with a certain mindset to be appreciated (a conclusion drawn from skimming through some unfortunate goodreads reviews) and it's not going to be a book for everyone. People after a fast-paced plot-driven adventure need not apply. But if a more ponderous read is what you're in the mood for, and if my comments above have piqued your interest or if you really love to read stories about the nature of stories, then this is the book for you.

4 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog.

[Jessica Bronder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Marvo is a real magician, not the Illusionists that we commonly think of when we hear magician. He controls mist, which can hide or show reality to a person. He also has the ability to give people tricks, like the ability to always see the truth or never to hurt another person. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Marvo’s story begins with people trying to kill him and his grandmother hiding them away in a secret room is a rather large building. They live hidden in this room for four years with Marvo sneaking out daily to find them food and watch what the people in the house do.

When Marvo’s grandmother dies, he is forced to go out in the world to make his way. But without an education and the basic skills to work, he does what he can to get by. The main thing he does is collect stories, from everyone and about everything. He ends up getting committed to a mental institute and meets Andra, a nurse. Later Marvo and Andra become a couple as they travel doing magic shows and gathering stories.

I have to say that the synopsis of this book makes it sound rather interesting. Sadly, the story left me very disappointed. There is no timeline so I was very confused about when or where this was supposed to have taken place. For the most part it is nothing more than a gathering of many stories that were a couple paragraphs long. They have no rhyme or reason and some had rather crude language and situations that put me off the book.

I would not recommend this book at all. There was no real point beyond a bunch of mish mash crass stories. If it was not for the fact that I got the book for free, I would have been taking it back for my money.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the detached narrative style that walked me through the main character's grim childhood into an adulthood of.. megalomania?melanchy? obsession?
His purpose and possible message of the novel is humans cannot handle the realities of life and it's this awareness that causes suicide, depression and violence. So Marvo uses his magic, the 'mist' and maintain the lie and those that know and act on this truth must be murdered. His hobby, obsession really is to collect stories and so scattered throughout the story are about 100 brief stories.

The novel was enjoyable for the atmosphere and feelings created in me almost floaty rather than the messaging (I think people can live with reality) and the sociopathy of Marvo and his partner who are frequently cruel but generally unlikeable.

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was absolutely enthralled with the first half of this book. I was hooked. I thought that I had stumbled upon a gold mine because the first half of Marvo's life was incredibly fascinating.
However, as the story went on, I lost interest. I wanted to know more about Marvo and his real magic.
I understand that Marvo collects stories, but some of the stories (There are a LOT of stories within the book that really do not lend much to the plot)
There was so much potential here, and in the end I was left disappointed.

[Mieneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misitification is a book like no other. That sounds cliché, but in this case it's absolutely true. While the set up of the novel is somewhat reminiscent of some of the stories in the classic A Thousand and One Nights – it's a semi-continuous story, interlaced with short vignettes – that which is contained in the narrative and the subjects of the little vignettes is unique, at least in my reading experience.

The opening scenes of the novel reminded me somewhat of the Achterhuis. Indeed, I had this idea that the story might be set in Nazi-occupied territories. And while Marvo and his grandmother are in hiding, we quickly discover that Marvo's world is not a Nazi-occupied one. In fact, I still couldn't tell you where exactly the book took place. However, this doesn't matter as the focus is so tightly on Marvo and his story and his world is so infused with magic, both of the true variety and that of illusions, that where we are is far less important than what, who and how we are.

One of the main plot points in the story is the relationship between Marvo and Andra, which is quite interesting and conflicted. On the one hand Andra seems to be cheating on Marvo at times, on the other hand she stays with him despite his almost callous disregard for her feelings and needs. If one takes Andra as a feminised form of andros, the Greek word for man, you could argue that Marvo's relationship with Andra is a mirror to his relationship with mankind. Going from a curious, young, and naive boy, Marvo turns into a rather bitter and weary man. As a youth he is fascinated by people, by their lives and their stories, but as a grown man, he slowly loses his passion for humanity, as he loses his passion for Andra. Her, and their, stories can't captivate him any more and he grows more and more distant and more and more introverted. In addition, where he started out relatively fearless, he ends up living in paranoid fear that he'll be killed during a performance. As a result he grows ever more elusive to the world around him.

As Marvo moves through life and he loses his innocence, he becomes more and more disillusioned and less inclined to guard the world from mass-depression through his magic of mists. The stories that fascinated him as a young man, which provided his education and a focus through which to see and understand the world, turn from illuminating the wonders of the world and mankind to shining a stark and unrelenting spotlight on Marvo's world and clearly reveal the sharp and unpleasant side of humanity to him. Still the novel ends on a hopeful note, with Marvo coming full circle and choosing a different life for his successor. One is left to imagine that this time around, life will be different for the misty magician and perhaps her life will be more balanced and happier.

Mistification is at once weirdly bizarre and utterly fascinating. It's a tale that'll make you think about the world and the way we view it, about how much our perception shapes our reality. It's a tale that won't be for everyone, but one I loved. For a less enthusiastic (and far more erudite) review see Niall a.k.a The Speculative Scotsman's review over on Strange Horizons. In any case, Mistification was my first taste of Kaaron Warren's writing and I definitely plan to check out her previous books with Angry Robot, Slights and Walking the Tree, because just one taste wasn't enough.

This book was sent to me for review by the publisher.

[Mark Webb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge. All my AWWC reviews can be found here.

Mistification by Kaaron Warren is an interesting book - very different from anything I've read in quite a while. It is one of those books I suspect of having hidden depths and that my meagre comprehension skills means I've missed the point of much of the story. So if you read a review which teases out a sensitive and powerful underlying message that makes a profound statement about human nature and our place in the world, pay more attention to that review rather than this one.

Marvo the Magician, grows up hidden in a hidden attic in a house with only his grandmother for company. By sneaking out at night he scavengers enough for them to live on, including a book of magic tricks which he devours.

When he gets older he realises that he also has real magic, the ability to pull "mist" down and reshape people's perceptions, memories and the world around them. When his grandmother dies he leaves his hidden sanctuary and heads out into the real world.

I found the structure of the novel interesting. It is made up of a overarching story arc with a constant series of vignettes, small stories by transient characters that serve to illustrate some of the larger themes of the book. It took little while to get into the groove of this style of story telling. At first I found the tangents a little distracting, and I put the book down and picked it up a few times without really getting into it. However, one longer stint of reading when home sick from work helped me pick up the thread and I found the second half of the book much easier to manage.

The novel explores a lot, sexual politics, relationships, fate vs destiny and in particular the baser motivations of human behaviour. The basis of Marvo's magic is that people need unrealistic hope to survive - that without the mist blurring their perception of the world, everyone would turn in despair to suicide. That's a bleak message.

In fact the whole novel is quite bleak. Bleak characterisation of people. Bleak message about humanity. Bleak outlook on life. I'm not sure which genre the novel has been placed in from a marketing perspective, but for my money this is a horror novel through and through.

The main character, Marvo, and his companion Andra are complex characters, equal part sympathetic and repellent. The writing is in parts visceral, especially when discussing Andra's fascination with bodily waste of all kinds. All in all it was very difficult to feel a connection with any character in the book, but that sense of being an outsider actually worked quite well when I sit back and consider the story as a whole.

The ending was good, closing the loop on the questions that were raised throughout the novel and certainly consistent with the characters as they were portrayed.

This is a thought provoking piece of writing. Recommended.

I also reviewed this book on my website.

[Dave Versace · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You love your tricks, Marvo. You must be careful to let people believe they ARE tricks, at all times. Let them think there is an answer, an explanation. If they think your magic is true, they will hate you. This has happened to me more than once.”

Marvo is a true magician, raised by his grandmother within the walls and attic of an old house, where they have fled from a murderous if vague civil unrest. There he teaches himself magic tricks, learns about the world watching a mute television and begins his lifelong addiction to listening to the stories that people tell about themselves. Once he is old enough to go out into the world, he devotes himself to understanding the world almost exclusively through these stories - some heartbreaking and personal, some awful and transgressive, some resonant with myth. Denied the grounding of a typical family upbringing, he is particularly obsessed with birth stories, the stranger the better. He finds love, of a sort, and becomes a renowned stage magician. He begins to understand that the mist, his magical ability to alter how people see the world, conveys a great and ultimately terrible responsibility.

Mistification is a fascinating piece of storytelling about stories, from the small curiosities that people build up into important myths with themselves at the centre, to the huge lies that they spin around themselves to obscure truths they cannot bear. It’s a story obsessed with magical traditions, superstitions and mythology, as is Marvo himself.

The pace of the novel perhaps suffers from Marvo’s apparent aimlessness - much of the book is taken up with his meandering trade in stories with just about everyone he ever meets - but I felt his relentless inquisitiveness worked in the book’s favour. Marvo’s quest to understand the world through stories is his life’s work, and Warren’s primary concern is to show what Marvo has learned. She almost never lets us glimpse the world except from his odd and myopic perspective. The plot has to force its way in between the gaps in the mist and the impact of the ending is all the more stunning for it.

Mistification is a beautiful piece told in a fairytale lilt but not always accessibly so. Marvo is not overly concerned with being liked and is often more selfish and spiteful than he lets himself believe. Given the tightness of the viewpoint, it was sometimes hard to sympathise with him. But Marvo’s lesson, that the world is best understood by listening to stories, is a resonant one.

[toria (vikz writes) · Rating 4 out of 5]

why am I reading this book

I am reading this as part of the Australian Women's writers challenge (http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/5...) (http://www.australianwomenwriters.com...)

Summary

A young boy grows up in a room with his grandmother, hiding from a foe who he can only hear and going on covert stealing missions. This book shows him; growing up, leaving his cage, falling in love and developing his own talents.

Themes

This book looks at the concepts of myth, story and realty. Marco gift allows him to throw a mist over peoples eyes. This mist allows him to distort reality, giving the person a new story and allowing Marco to alter their history. Through out his journey he encounters people who tell them his story. As a reward, he alters their story to take away their painful memories. Marco becomes aware that these stories are needed if humanity are to survive. Humans would go mad if they were forced to face the truth.

In addition, it takes a look at the difference between the world as it is portrayed in the media and the reality of our own lived experience. Marco spends his life in a room watching TV with no sound and this does not prepare him for the real world.

my thoughts

I was fascinated by the world that Warren creates within this work. I loved the ideas that she explores. The stories interspersed within the narrative make for interesting reading. But, the characters, especially Marco, left me cold. They didn't engage me. Therefore, I was not able to give it a five.

[arjuna · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, Warren's writing is captivating and compelling, even in this, something that starts out with an ostensibly fierce trajectory yet ultimately becomes a strange, aimless, wandering, shaggy-dog story crossed with a hippie's notebook. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. If I call her prose "enchanting" it'll come across as some kind of bad pun, but frankly it *is*, dammit. She has the gift of beautiful simplicity. I don't think this book goes anywhere; I don't think it's meant to... I think it's a magical, beautiful, moving and happy picaresque that just *is* and frankly I'm cool with that. The journey is as marvellous, and as important, as the destination - perhaps more so. On the "to re-read" list, and for all the right reasons. (Not just because her Canberra-girl origins are showing :). One of my favourite contemporary authors, for all sorts of reasons - every book unlike any other, by anyone, even herself. MANY MANY MORE PLEASE.

[Thoraiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it lazy to call a book about a magician...magical? Because 'Mistification' is melancholy, macabre and absolutely magical. Read it!

(Yes, I even enjoyed the paradoxes of parsley (pp228). I keep enough parsley growing in my garden to make an emergency tabbouleh at a moment's notice, only to discover that I have poisoned my life by transplanting it. If only this book had been published much sooner.)

[Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I rarely abandon a book, but I had to set this one aside after about 100 pages. There are some interesting ideas about magic and the city in here, but so far I have no idea what the plot is going to be, if there is going to be one. The narrative is disjointed and dreamlike, but not in a good way – just in a confusing way. And the characters come off so mystical that they're impossible to relate to. I really wanted to like this one, but I just couldn't get into it.

[Jessica Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Impressive evocation of stories related to magic and life, but prolix and hard to identify with. The main characters were kind of repellent and there didn't seem to be a big throughline. I've been reading my way through this publisher's catalog and a lot of the books suffer from a lack of deep characterization.

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really wanted to like this book. I enjoyed the start and several other portions of the book. Unfortunately Warren's writing style did not mesh with my personal reading preferences. End result is that I could never really get into the book.
I however, believe that it is a unique book and idea that should be given a chance on its own merits.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent tale about tales and our need for them. The main character collects stories, and we are treated to them throughout the book in the form of flash fiction, poems, recipes, folk remedies, etc. Highly unusual in structure and voice, it may not be to all tastes. Those that are not off-put by the unusual nature of the book will find quite a gem. Frankly, I loved it.

[Cat Sheely · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Kaaren Warren and this book kept me turning pages. An unusual character in Marvo the Magician and his need for stories leads to stories within stories that have meaning on multiple levels. Both an adventure story often scarily quirky and a story of one man's fight for his own truth, Mistification was a delight for me.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am about a third of the way through and really enjoying it so far. I have absolutely no idea of what will happen next.

[Karen Desmond · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it's just me but I really didn't get this book. I did get half-way through and then I just skipped ahead to see if anything made sense - it didn't. Maybe it's just me.