A magical girl retires : a novel

A magical girl retires A novel

Sŏ-ryŏn Pak

Book - 2024

Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul's Mapo Bridge. But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white, her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. But the woman's excitement turns to frustration when she learns that being a magical girl in real life is much different than how it's portrayed in manga. It isn't just destiny--it's work. Magical girls go to job fairs, join trade unions, attend classes. And for this magical girl there are no special powers and no great perks, and despite being magical,... she still battles with low self-esteem. Her magic wand . . . is a credit card--which she must use to defeat a terrifying threat that isn't a monster or an intergalactic war. It's global climate change. Because magical girls need to think about sustainability, too. Park Seolyeon reimagines classic fantasy tropes in a novel that explores real-world challenges that are both deeply personal and universal: the search for meaning and the desire to do good in a world that feels like it's ending. A fun, fast-paced, and enchanting narrative that sparkles thanks to award-nominated translator Anton Hur, A Magical Girl Retires reminds us that we are all magical girls--that fighting evil by moonlight and winning love by daylight can be anyone's game.

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FICTION/Seolyeon Park
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Subjects
Women > Korea (South) > Seoul > Fiction.
Depression in women > Fiction.
Generation Y > Fiction.
Magic > Fiction.
Seoul (Korea) > Ficiton.
Fantasy fiction.
Genres
Fantasy fiction
Published
New York : HarperCollins [2024]
Language
English
Korean
Main Author
Sŏ-ryŏn Pak (author)
Other Authors
Sŏ-ryŏn. 박 서련 Pak (-), Anton Hur (translator)
Edition
First Harpervia edition
Item Description
"Originally published as Mabopssonyo euntwehamnida in South Korea in 2022 by Changbi Publishers" -- tp verso.
Physical Description
160 pages ; illustrations ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780063373266
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Magical girls--think Sailor Moon--have been inhabiting manga, manhwa, comics, anime, and films for decades. Lauded with some of Korea's top honors, best-selling Park makes her translated U.S. debut with what initially reads like a fun, fluffy adventure, enhanced with swoony manhwa-style illustrations by Kim Sanho, starring superpowered young women charged with saving the world. Ah Roa, otherwise known as Clairvoyant Magical Girl, exits a taxi just in time to announce to a 29-year-old, debt-ridden, lonely woman contemplating death, "Your destiny is to become a magical girl," indeed "the greatest magical girl of all," the Magical Girl of Time. She's the best hope for defeating humanity's greatest threat, climate change. With Ah Roa as mentor and armed with a black credit card talisman, the newest magical girl clearly has a behemoth task before her. Will she--can she--do it? Award-winning Hur, Park's adroit Anglophone enabler, ensures that what could have been a light novel (and certainly can be enjoyed as such) has further literary (and social) significance. "Magical girls exist because justice does not," Hur's not-be-be-skipped afterword reminds us.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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