The Book of Magic

Jet’s sister, Franny, is “in her eighties but her hair had a red tone […] a rinse of madder root” (17). The curse killed Franny’s husband, Haylin, who died of cancer. Franny and Jet are foils in many ways. Franny, “known for her cool demeanor, somehow become[s] a person at the mercy of her emotions” (157) after Jet dies. They begin as opposites but end up being more similar than anyone thought. They both love deeply and structure their lives around love.

Franny “had been the one meant to end the curse all along” (294). Her act of love is sacrificing herself (and the original book containing the family’s magic) to end the curse. This act reunites her with Jet, whom she deeply misses for most of the novel. Vincent recalls that people called Franny “the Maid of Thorns when she was young, for she hid her true emotions. Stone-heart, cold-heart, no-heart, biggest heart he had ever known” (356). She was “the red-haired girl who saved him time and time again, who knew him when no one else did. Her love was the fiercest part about her” (356). It takes her kind of love to end a generational curse. Her death and Jet’s death bookend the novel. Franny’s sacrifice spurs other characters’ growth.

Raised by Jet and Franny (along with her sister, Gillian), Sally is now 44 and is the Owens Library’s director. As a bloodline witch, Sally has black blood and tears, but she dislikes practicing magic. She has beautiful, dense black hair and “inherited [Franny’s] no-nonsense attitude; [she’s] curt and [doesn’t] easily suffer fools” (12). She has been widowed twice: The curse targeted Michael and Gary. Michael and Sally had two daughters: Kylie and Antonia. However, due to the trauma of losing two husbands, Sally was a distracted parent and refused to teach her daughters about their bloodline magic and curse.

While Sally is trying to locate Kylie, she falls in love with Ian and saves his life twice. The second time she frees him from Tom’s black magic, she sacrifices her bloodline powers. She also shaves her head, sacrificing her beautiful hair. After becoming more “normal,” as she always wanted, she becomes kinder and happier, and she experiences significant growth because she learns to respect her bloodline powers even though she must sacrifice them. Because of Kylie’s irresponsible actions, Sally realizes that keeping knowledge of bloodline magic from her daughters was wrong. She studies the Nameless Art (learned magic) with Ian’s mother and enjoys it more than bloodline powers. As the novel ends, Sally works at Cat’s Library and lives in Thornfield.

Sally’s sister, Gillian, is 43. She works “in a lab at MIT researching genetics” (16) and has a husband named Ben Frye. He’s a science teacher, and Gillian’s niece was his student. They keep their love secret because of the curse and struggle to have a baby. Gillian “often spoke about topics that Sally kept off limits” (149) with her nieces. Gillian longs to have more bloodline powers and practices magic more than Sally. One of Gillian’s strongest powers is her beauty and charm: She “inherited a fair share of Vincent’s magnetism” (157). Men frequently become infatuated with her after seeing her only briefly.

In England, Gillian’s bloodline powers increase: She “[has] skills she hadn’t imagined, and being here [has] woken what was inside of her” (244). Margaret gives Gillian a magical remedy for infertility, which allows Gillian to have a baby, whom they name Francesca Bridget (and is usually called Birdie). Birdie has bloodline powers related to calling birds. Once the curse is broken, Gillian and Ben move in together; they no longer need to keep their relationship secret.

Sally’s oldest daughter, Antonia, is 23 and has red hair. Highly intelligent, she’s studying emergency medicine. She’s a lesbian and is having a baby with gay male friends Scott Morrison and Joel McKenna. Because Sally was a distracted parent, Antonia was “the responsible one who did what she must without anyone’s help” (143) and “the practical sister, the dutiful daughter, [and] the niece who looked after the family obligations” (150).

Antonia’s pregnancy keeps her from traveling to England. She stays in Massachusetts and falls in love with the family lawyer, Ariel. In addition, Antonia visits the Reverend in Jet’s place and learns to bake for him. Antonia’s missing Kylie mirrors Franny’s missing Jet. As the responsible eldest daughter, Antonia finds Maria’s letter about how to break the curse. Antonia gives birth to a son whom they name Leo.

Antonia’s younger sister, Kylie, is under 21 and very tall. A “reluctant beauty” (204), she was a “runner in high school” (42). At the beginning of the novel, Kylie is a “sophomore studying classics, [and is] suggestible and sensitive, a reader of novels, which [made] her a target to wrought-up emotions” (57) in Cambridge. She’s in love with her childhood friend, Gideon. After she tells him so, the curse begins, and he’s hit by a car. Gideon’s coma motivates Kylie to break the family curse.

She steals The Book of the Raven, which was intended for Franny, and is “drawn to the left-handed side” (124) to save Gideon. Tom takes advantage of Kylie not only because of her emotional state but also because she’s unfamiliar with magic. She learns about her bloodline powers through Tom. When they start practicing left-handed, or black, magic together, Kylie’s hair, which had a red wash in it, turns black. She unwittingly assists him in cursing Thornfield before being reunited with her family.

Running away from Tom in the red rain makes Kylie ill. She and Gideon don’t recover until Franny sacrifices herself to break the curse. Kylie experiences a significant growth arc once she recovers and fully realizes the extent of Tom’s deception. Back in the US, Kylie moves into Jet’s house on Magnolia Street with Gideon and, like Jet did, helps neighbors, proving “quite good at magic” (362). She transfers to Simmons to study library science and works at the Owens Library.

Franny and Jet’s brother, Vincent, has grey eyes like his sisters. He was a famous musician, faked his death to avoid the curse, and hid in France with his beloved William. Vincent is the “sort of man who loved completely” (68). After William died, Vincent was “haunted” and adopted a stray dog he named Dodger, mirroring Jet’s taking in Daisy and giving her to Rafael. Vincent stays with Agnes Durant in Paris. Agnes is a charming host.

Vincent “had always been a finder, able to locate what was missing or lost” (71). When Jet’s final letter to him arrives, “for the first time in a long time he felt as if anything could happen” (124). He happily helps the family locate Kylie and enjoys reconnecting with Franny. Vincent can help find Kylie because, like her, he tried left-handed magic in his youth. However, he abandoned that pursuit because he was well-loved by his family. At the novel’s end, Vincent falls for David, a librarian, and they move in together.

Ian is a handsome, tall, 50-year-old writer and former professor. He was “let go [from Oxford and University of St. Andrews] because of his unorthodox teachings” (160). Before getting his degrees, Ian was a thief and did time in prison. His mother brought him grimoires to read while he was incarcerated, and he got 19 tattoos, each representing a different magical text: “Magic was everything to him” (181). At the beginning of the novel, Ian is completing the final copyedits on his book, The History of Magic. He has been working on it for 20 years, and it’s published at the end of the novel. Ian’s day job is investigating and removing black magic.

His crow tattoo is his first connection to Sally: She personally aligns with birds, and her family considers crows a sign of good fortune. After she saves Ian from Tom’s hex, Ian helps Sally find Kylie. Franny helps Ian figure out the topic of his next book: the lives of the witches of Essex, England. After Ian and Sally fall in love, he has her name tattooed on his left wrist; it’s “the most important bit of magic, the end and the beginning of his story” (373).

Margaret, Ian’s mother, “[knows] the Nameless Art inside out” (242). She isn’t a bloodline witch but someone who studies magic and learns from bloodline witches. Margaret spent her whole life in Essex until Ian and Sally got married in Massachusetts. Before and after attending the wedding, Margaret teaches Sally about the Nameless Art.

Tom, often referred to as Bad Tom, is the main antagonist in The Book of Magic. He practices left-handed magic but isn’t particularly good at it except for poisons. He excels at casting spells and hexes that use poisons. A distant cousin of the Owenses, Tom has spent his life in Thornfield. His first hex on Ian occurs right before Sally goes to see Ian. Breaking the hex requires magic from multiple witches and expensive supplies.

Kylie finds Tom’s “desire for revenge, intriguing at first, [but it] become[s] exhausting” (278). She unwittingly helps Tom put the Red Death curse on Thornfield as revenge for his family being outcasts in the village. “[N]othing but darkness loom[s] inside him” (310). After Tom hexes Ian a second time, Sally shaves her head to break the hex, and this foils Tom’s baldness. Her bare head is a sacrifice for love, and Tom rejects love. Sally’s sacrificing her hair and magic forces Tom to flee from Thornfield and never return.