The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Wayward Son (Simon Snow #2)
By Rainbow Rowell
St. Martin’s Press, 2019
Five Stars

“It’s the Normals who give words magic.”

Brilliant. If, as I said in the opening lines of my review for the first book of the Simon Snow series (Carry on, 2015), Rainbow Rowell has given readers like me exactly what J.K. Rowling never could; then the second book gives us something Rowling wouldn’t even have imagined.

I’m not sure where to start, because there are so many spoilers to avoid. Let’s just say that this second installment of Simon Snow’s Saga is all about CONTEXT.

Simon Snow has no magic – but he does have big red dragon wings and a matching tail. Basilton Grimm-Pitch is still a vampire, but now he’s Simon’s boyfriend. Supposedly. Penny Bunce is still pushy and annoying but every bit as smart as she was…before. Although they’ve left Watford for an unnamed university in London, they’re just not that into it. Plus, Baz and Simon are having trouble communicating, partly because Simon is still freaked out about the whole no-magic-but-wings thing; but also because these are twenty-year-old boys who have not magically been given the ability to talk about their emotions.

Out of nowhere, it seems, Penelope gets it into her head to take her friends on a spontaneous (and vaguely illegal) holiday to the United States. The weak link in her logic is the premise that they’re going to go see Simon’s ex-girlfriend Agatha, who is in college in San Diego, having run away to America and left her wand behind in the wake of all the tumult of book one. What Penelope doesn’t even consider is the place they’re going – and this story, hilarious, action-packed and not a little terrifying – is all about how very different in every way America is.

It always struck me as odd that J.K. Rowling never even ventured a random comment about the United States, or what America’s equivalent of a magical school might be. Oh, we got Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, but they were clearly European, and we all know that western Europe is hardly bigger than Texas. Rainbow Rowell goes there. Literally. Or, actually, literarily. Whatever. The result is amazing.

Simon, Baz and Penny are totally out of context, and they are as surprised, indeed blindsided, by the ramifications of that truth as they work their way from Chicago (supposedly to visit Penny’s boyfriend Micah) to California in a rented Mustang convertible. These are kids who, so very British and insular (literally and figuratively), possess an idea of the USA that’s based on television and internet searches. Suddenly, these young English magical superheroes find themselves stranded (oh, it’s way more complicated and funnier than that) and having to make it all up as they go along. What’s so marvelous about this is that it turns into an extended joke about America, but with the UK as the butt of that joke.

The book jumps from one character’s point-of-view to the next, adding a significant new character who pops up unexpectedly and (to me, at least) becomes the “voice of America” for our wayward magicians. I will say no more, other than he feels very American to me, in just the right way. With this tool in her narrative arsenal, Rowell lets us dig into the young minds of each of the characters, so that we see what they’re thinking and understand how they feel. There is no lack of magical violence in this story, but it is surprisingly light-hearted and laugh-inducing. It is a scary, screwball road trip on which Harry, Ron and Hermione would never have ventured.

Best of all, it looks like Rowell is still writing. I hope the next book appears more quickly, but I’ll wait however long it takes.