a kind of magic book review

Book review: A Kind of Magic, Anna Spargo-Ryan

Writing and Publishing

‘Exquisitely honest, A Kind of Magic is an unforgettable example of empowerment via the gradual restructuring of narrative identity. Photo supplied,

Anna Spargo-Ryan’s illuminative memoir asks – and answers – psychological and philosophical questions about identity, narrative, and existence while engaging in the deeply subjective task of writing purely from memory. Beginning with self-aware perfectionism and the need to be seen as both good-and-bad enough, Spargo-Ryan invites readers into her consciousness with evocative ease. A Kind of Magic explores how our narrative identities are shaped by the stories we tell about ourselves, and the value judgments we attach to these stories. 

Interspersed with touching familial anecdotes, this perceptive read highlights situational absurdity to great comedic effect, without inadvertently invalidating the seriousness of the subject matter. This book is funny in the same way as asking someone to travel hundreds of kilometres to speak at an agoraphobia conference is funny. However, it is also vulnerable, authentic, and contemplative, asking questions like; is the fear of abandonment ever justified? What is the relationship between caregiver neglect and self-belief? How do the plot twists of our lives impact our narrative identities? 

Chapter titles alternate between aspects of mental health (past tense narrative) and months of the year (present tense) culminating in the inevitable meeting of timelines. One chapter entitled ‘The process of retaining information over time’ is concerned with the fallibility of childhood memory, and the link between mental time travel and fear in the context of mental illness.

Another chapter, ‘May’, features an adult Spargo-Ryan, examining her enmeshment schema and underdeveloped sense of self. Some chapters centre around wanting one’s children to be safe and happy, and trying-not-to-look-scary in the midst of a full blown panic attack. Others touch upon existential dread, encroaching agoraphobia, and a thousand varieties of fear. ‘A mood disorder associated with childbirth’ outlines the medical gaslighting of women in labour and ‘Having the qualities of being a mother’ exposes the echoes of an ancestral curse repeated across the lives of the author’s now-teenaged daughters.

Ruminating on the ancestral origins of her mental illness, Spargo-Ryan speaks of how disruption to the continuity of memory results in disruption to the continuity of identity, delving into her lived experience of mental illness with humour, sensitivity, and clarity. Describing the complex in simple terms, she comments on the brokenness of Australia’s mental health system, while emphasising the gendered mislabelling of behaviours and the growing field of research surrounding neurodiversity. She also touches upon the dehumanising stigma that comes with certain diagnoses, and the contradictory importance/futility of applying labels to human beings.

Spargo-Ryan’s personal experience demonstrates both the power of developing an accurate mental health vocabulary and the pitfalls of asking uninformed medical professionals for help they don’t know how to give. 

Read: Exhibition review: In Our Time and Treasures of Dai Gum San

Exquisitely honest, A Kind of Magic is an unforgettable example of empowerment via the gradual restructuring of narrative identity. The author captures what it feels like to frantically grasp at the threads of oneself, taking her readers on an optimistic journey of radical self-creation. This book will resonate with magical thinkers, armchair psychologists, and people whose timelines unglue themselves.

A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan Publisher: Ultimo Press ISBN: 9781761150739 Format: Paperback Pages: 352 pp Release Date: 5 October 2022 RRP: $36.99

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Nanci Nott is a nerdy creative with particular passions for philosophy and the arts. She has completed a BA in Philosophy, and postgraduate studies in digital and social media. Nanci is currently undertaking an MA in Creative Writing, and is working on a variety of projects ranging from novels to video games. Nanci loves reviewing books, exhibitions, and performances for ArtsHub, and is creative director at Defy Reality Entertainment.

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A Kind of Magic book review: Anna Spargo-Ryan’s powerful memoir on living with complex mental illness

A KIND OF MAGIC

Anna Spargo-Ryan (Ultimo, $36.99)

At the beginning of A Kind of Magic, we find Anna Spargo-Ryan nervously visiting a new psychologist, a woman who is “a specialist in anxiety and psychosis”. “I am also a specialist in anxiety and psychosis,” Spargo-Ryan adds, “but in the other way, where they sometimes try to kill me.” It’s a moment that captures not only a complicated mix of feelings at a vulnerable moment, but also the combination of humour and honesty that characterises the award-winning Melbourne-based author’s powerful memoir about living with complex mental illness.

One of the book’s key interests is memory: its mutability and fallibility, and its importance to our sense of identity. This informs the memoir’s non-linear structure, which interweaves chapters concerning more recent events, written in the present tense, with a past-tense narrative that dips into memories including Spargo-Ryan’s intensely anxious childhood, her terrifying early experiences of psychosis, and the mental-health struggles that accompanied becoming a young mother.

Along the way, Spargo-Ryan — who is known for her novels The Gulf and The Paper House, as well as her non-fiction writing — delves into relevant scientific research while also endeavouring to situate her experiences within the context of a culture and medical system often ill-equipped to help or understand people grappling with their mental health. This might sound like a lot of ground to cover, and A Kind of Magic is certainly ambitious in this regard, but Spargo-Ryan synthesises it all admirably.

This might also sound rather harrowing, and certainly there are moments that can make for difficult reading, perhaps particularly for those of us who share some of the author’s diagnoses. But there’s also much here that is beautiful, moving and even optimistic, including the way Spargo-Ryan says she has, in writing this book, “taken my self-narrative from before and shaped it into a new way of looking at myself. I’ve remembered some things, and forgotten others. I am a more peaceful person than I was when I started.”

THE GHOST OF GRACIE FLYNN

Joanna Morrison (Fremantle Press, $32.99)

Fellow scaredy-cats need not be frightened off by Perth author Joanna Morrison’s Hungerford-shortlisted debut novel, whose titular ghost is less a spooky apparition than a poignant all-seeing narrator. It’s told from the perspective of Gracie, a young woman who watches over her close university friends Sam, Robyn and Cohen some 18 years after her death as they continue to be haunted by grief, despite having gone on to live ostensibly successful lives. The novel begins with a second death — that of Sam — with the mystery of his and Gracie’s demises unfolding as the story roams back and forth between the friends’ student days and the more recent past.

THOSE DASHING MCDONAGH SISTERS

Mandy Sayer (NewSouth, $39.99)

Sisters Isabel, Phyllis and Paulette McDonagh were born in quick succession between 1899 and 1901: fortuitously, as Mandy Sayer notes, entering “the world at the same time as motion pictures were entering the Australian experience”. Indeed, the trio would become pioneers of Australian cinema, making four feature films and a series of documentaries, with Paulette becoming one of only five female directors in the world at the time — and yet, Sayer says, they’re now better remembered in the UK than in their own country. Her deeply researched biography explores their remarkable professional and personal lives, aiming to “rescue these dashing sisters from their omission from our national and cinematic history”.

LESS IS LOST

Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown, $29.99)

There are shades of David Sedaris to this follow-up to Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Less, whose fans will be delighted to see his protagonist — self-described “middle-aged gay white novelist nobody’s ever heard of” Arthur Less — return for another charming and witty literary outing. It sees Less enjoying some professional success, as well as “unmarital bliss” with partner (and the novel’s narrator) Freddy Pelu, before the death of his former lover precipitates a financial crisis that threatens his and Freddy’s home. Less thus finds himself on the move in the face of his problems once again, travelling across the US through the “Mild Mild West”, the South and beyond.

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Posted on 18 Oct 2022 in Non-Fiction |

ANNA SPARGO-RYAN A Kind of Magic. Reviewed by Virginia Muzik

Tags: Anna Spargo-Ryan / memoir / mental illness / panic attacks

Anna Spargo-Ryan’s memoir melds a vivid account of lifelong mental illness with thorough research.

Early on in A Kind of Magic , Anna Spargo-Ryan tries to establish where her mental illness story begins, looking – not surprisingly – to her family. Did she inherit depression from a paternal grandfather or a ‘long-ago uncle’? OCD from her maternal grandmother? Anxiety and catastrophising from her parents?

As she recalls possible points of the genesis of her mental illness, Spargo-Ryan admits memory is seldom reliable, while noting childhood memory in particular is crucial to how we form our identities:

Throughout our lives, but especially as children, we take in and store information that propels us through the rest of our existence. None of it is definitive. Memories that seem clear to us as adults are changed by many factors: the passing of years, trauma, injury, decay. Even the act of remembering distorts it; we recall and store a memory differently every time. Among our tools for developing our sense of self are fabrications, hearsay, things that happened in a dream and stuff that was actually on TV.

Spargo-Ryan examines the nature of memory and identity – and our responses to both – throughout the book. She splices together memories from her childhood, teenage years and early adulthood with more recent recollections – not always in chronological order, perhaps to demonstrate the temporal fluidity of memory, and how trauma memory especially can trap our present selves in a past moment:

Trauma draws fault lines between short- and long-term memory to the extent that it can be impossible to know when we are in time. Long-ago atrocities persist as newly created memories. As threats.

The main chapters are narrated in the past tense, but some are preceded by brief, present-tense scenes titled with months of the year. In these scenes, Spargo-Ryan recounts her experience of myriad mental illnesses and her specific interactions with mental health support: her therapist, a crisis assessment and treatment team, and her family.

These separate timelines (which eventually converge) give the narrative a somewhat disjointed feel that mimics the non-linear nature of memory. It also serves to chart Spargo-Ryan’s path to a degree of healing and self-acceptance.

With main chapter titles lifted from what she calls ‘the clinical or technical definition of an aspect of life with mental illness’ , Spargo-Ryan aims to show how poorly these terms reflect a person’s deeply individual experience of mental illness.

The titles also reinforce another important theme in the work: how the inadequacies of the language used to diagnose, define and discuss mental illness can lead to gaps in communication between someone with mental illness and health professionals, as Spargo-Ryan has experienced:

Language fell devastatingly short in getting me the appropriate help … When I said I had anxiety, what I actually meant was that my thoughts and body weren’t synchronised and it made me frightened – I was panicked, but also extremely confused … I couldn’t put these experiences into words they could match up with their clinical tools.

She also acknowledges how language and literacy levels can further impede access to appropriate treatment:

As with many invisible illnesses, professionals rely on a patient to accurately self-assess. This assumes both a level of literacy and the capacity to match an abstract feeling to a concrete diagnostic criteria.

This is a thoroughly researched work (emerging from a PhD project), but it’s more accessible than academic. Spargo-Ryan deftly weaves in a mix of citations to back up or contrast her personal experience, which makes for an engaging and enlightening read.

Spargo-Ryan’s personal recollections are also in clear, accessible language. At times urgent, frightening and funny, she manages to move the reader without using flowery or melodramatic prose. She balances the dark and harrowing moments with humour and singularly original turns of phrase. In a section recalling the day she met her partner, Gaz, she writes:

I smelled horrible. I smelled like someone you would find in your cupboard and fend off with a rake. I know because I have been that person and I know how I smelled then.

It’s Spargo-Ryan’s descriptions of her panic attacks, and psychotic and dissociative episodes, that are especially compelling. In a vivid example, she recounts a psychotic episode when she was four months pregnant with her first child:

I opened my eyes and I was not there. Nobody was inside of me. Not me or the baby. The shell of a body frightened me. Help , I said. Help. HELP. Then I was up, scrambling out of the makeshift bed. My skeleton raced to catch up with me, running, sprinting.

In a later, particularly poignant section, Spargo-Ryan reflects on how terrifying it was as a six year old to witness her mother having a panic attack; how she’d often blame herself for it. To lessen the impact of her mental illness on her two children, Spargo-Ryan is able to explain to them what’s happening as it’s happening:

Now when I’m having a panic attack, I can pull it together enough to say to them, ‘This isn’t your fault. You’re safe. I’m not in danger, my brain just thinks I am.’

Through writing her story, Spargo-Ryan says she has ‘rewritten my identity. I have an improved understanding of what happened and why. I have come to a sense of forgiveness …’ Through sharing it, she offers compassion and companionship – to herself and the reader. As she says in a video on her website : ‘I hope that it can become like a friend on your bookshelf.’

A Kind of Magic is ultimately an uplifting read that’s brimming with hope. It’s especially affirming for anyone living with mental illness. For those wishing to better understand what that’s like (perhaps even mental health clinicians, therapists and support workers), this book may help bridge gaps in communicating such an individual experience, hopefully leading to better health care.

Anna Spargo-Ryan A Kind of Magic Ultimo Press 2022 PB 352 pp $36.99

Virginia Muzik lives and writes on Gadigal land. Her memoir works are featured in the 2022 Hunter Writers Centre Grieve anthology and online journals. She is slowly working on a full-length memoir. Find her on Twitter @writeNOISEComms and virginiamuzik.com

You can buy  A Kind of Magic from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW or you can buy it from Booktopia .

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A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan

Reviewed by Jackie Tang

Anna Spargo-Ryan’s A Kind of Magic is a memoir of a mind and the courage it takes to build a sense of self. Spargo-Ryan has lived with mental illness as a constant in her life. As a child, she was gripped with persistent anxiety that something terrible would happen. As a young person just out of high school, she weathered extreme stretches of dissociation – ‘my brain protected itself from itself, sliding more and more layers of glass between me and the world’. She has experienced overwhelming thoughts and feelings that can cause her to question her sense of worth, her memories of the past, her place in time – in effect, her confidence in the reality of the life she has built for herself.

And yet, what a life it is. As you read this powerful memoir, what becomes apparent is how hard Spargo-Ryan has worked to carve out something loving, meaningful and hers, and how scrupulously she assesses her own mental health history. Too often discussions of mental illness can tend toward over-simplification and diagnostic criteria – people want to ‘understand’ what’s wrong with someone – at the expense of the experiences of the person themselves. A Kind of Magic wants to right that imbalance. It rejects the easiness of linear narrative and causal family histories; instead Spargo-Ryan skips around moments of her life, asking probing questions and turning them over and over against the light to explore their facets: ‘I offer my own story as evidence I can build a self. As an interrogation of the connective tissue that exists inside me somewhere.’

This is not an esoteric book by any measure. Spargo-Ryan writes with lucid beauty and an eye for small details that animate a memory. Her language is clear and accessible, and her tone is calm and authoritative, occasionally juddering into a visceral stream of consciousness to immerse the reader in an experience of psychosis, or rising into impassioned rhetoric to rail against the failures of our mental health system. If you enjoy emotive memoirs that blend introspection, deep research and stylish prose, this will be essential reading.

Jackie Tang is the editor of Readings Monthly.

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A Kind of Magic book review: Anna Spargo-Ryan’s powerful memoir on living with complex mental illness

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reviewA Kind of Magic book review: Anna Spargo-Ryan’s powerful memoir on living with complex mental illnessGemma NisbetThe West AustralianSat, 5 November 2022 2:30AMCommentsCommentsCamera IconAuthor Anna Spargo-Ryan. Credit: suppliedShare to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail UsCopy the LinkA KIND OF MAGIC Anna Spargo-Ryan (Ultimo, $36.99)

Camera IconA Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan. Credit: supplied At the beginning of A Kind of Magic, we find Anna Spargo-Ryan nervously visiting a new psychologist, a woman who is “a specialist in anxiety and psychosis”. “I am also a specialist in anxiety and psychosis,” Spargo-Ryan adds, “but in the other way, where they sometimes try to kill me.” It’s a moment that captures not only a complicated mix of feelings at a vulnerable moment, but also the combination of humour and honesty that characterises the award-winning Melbourne-based author’s powerful memoir about living with complex mental illness.

One of the book’s key interests is memory: its mutability and fallibility, and its importance to our sense of identity. This informs the memoir’s non-linear structure, which interweaves chapters concerning more recent events, written in the present tense, with a past-tense narrative that dips into memories including Spargo-Ryan’s intensely anxious childhood, her terrifying early experiences of psychosis, and the mental-health struggles that accompanied becoming a young mother.

Along the way, Spargo-Ryan — who is known for her novels The Gulf and The Paper House, as well as her non-fiction writing — delves into relevant scientific research while also endeavouring to situate her experiences within the context of a culture and medical system often ill-equipped to help or understand people grappling with their mental health. This might sound like a lot of ground to cover, and A Kind of Magic is certainly ambitious in this regard, but Spargo-Ryan synthesises it all admirably.

This might also sound rather harrowing, and certainly there are moments that can make for difficult reading, perhaps particularly for those of us who share some of the author’s diagnoses. But there’s also much here that is beautiful, moving and even optimistic, including the way Spargo-Ryan says she has, in writing this book, “taken my self-narrative from before and shaped it into a new way of looking at myself. I’ve remembered some things, and forgotten others. I am a more peaceful person than I was when I started.”

THE GHOST OF GRACIE FLYNNCamera IconThe Ghost of Gracie Flynn by Joanna Morrison Credit: supplied Joanna Morrison (Fremantle Press, $32.99)

Fellow scaredy-cats need not be frightened off by Perth author Joanna Morrison’s Hungerford-shortlisted debut novel, whose titular ghost is less a spooky apparition than a poignant all-seeing narrator. It’s told from the perspective of Gracie, a young woman who watches over her close university friends Sam, Robyn and Cohen some 18 years after her death as they continue to be haunted by grief, despite having gone on to live ostensibly successful lives. The novel begins with a second death — that of Sam — with the mystery of his and Gracie’s demises unfolding as the story roams back and forth between the friends’ student days and the more recent past.

THOSE DASHING MCDONAGH SISTERSCamera IconThose Dashing McDonagh Sisters by Mandy Sayer. Credit: supplied Mandy Sayer (NewSouth, $39.99)

Sisters Isabel, Phyllis and Paulette McDonagh were born in quick succession between 1899 and 1901: fortuitously, as Mandy Sayer notes, entering “the world at the same time as motion pictures were entering the Australian experience”. Indeed, the trio would become pioneers of Australian cinema, making four feature films and a series of documentaries, with Paulette becoming one of only five female directors in the world at the time — and yet, Sayer says, they’re now better remembered in the UK than in their own country. Her deeply researched biography explores their remarkable professional and personal lives, aiming to “rescue these dashing sisters from their omission from our national and cinematic history”.

LESS IS LOSTCamera IconLess is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer. Credit: supplied Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown, $29.99)

There are shades of David Sedaris to this follow-up to Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Less, whose fans will be delighted to see his protagonist — self-described “middle-aged gay white novelist nobody’s ever heard of” Arthur Less — return for another charming and witty literary outing. It sees Less enjoying some professional success, as well as “unmarital bliss” with partner (and the novel’s narrator) Freddy Pelu, before the death of his former lover precipitates a financial crisis that threatens his and Freddy’s home. Less thus finds himself on the move in the face of his problems once again, travelling across the US through the “Mild Mild West”, the South and beyond.

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A Kind of Magic (Anna Spargo-Ryan, Ultimo)

It’s still quite something to read a book that speaks the truth about mental health. A Kind of Magic is Anna Spargo-Ryan’s epic, relentlessly honest autobiography of a life lived under the many umbrellas of mental illness. It is a wonderful, wide-ranging feat. We move with Spargo-Ryan through debilitating mental health challenges, from childhood through to unattended book launches, but rarely in chronological order, as her illness often disrupts space and continuity. No matter what happens, however, Spargo-Ryan’s anxiety is ever present and pervasive, both in her life and in her writing. Needling. Never-ending. This is the way to write it: as it really is. There is hope at the end of this book, but thank god it’s the sort of hope we actually need: the hope, slowly emerging in mainstream society, that those of us with mental health challenges will be seen and heard rather than being wished better. With each new book that a woman writes about herself in this way we are gifted with an invitation to empathy. Spargo-Ryan shows us, with grace and brutal experience, just how much there is to wade through before people eventually acquire the tools to survive. Readers who enjoyed Spargo-Ryan’s first two books, The Paper House and The Gulf— or who have latched on to her Twitter feed—will absorb A Kind of Magic with gusto.

Rebecca Whitehead is a freelance writer from Melbourne.

Category: Reviews

Privacy Overview

A Kind of Magic

An autobiography.

• 3.5 • 2 Ratings

Publisher Description

Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber's fascinating second autobiography—a follow-up to her first, A Peculiar Treasure —in which she shares the adventures of her life from 1939 to 1963. Rather than just an autobiography, A Kind of Magic serves as a chronicle of American history from 1939-1963 through the eyes of a highly skilled and sensitive observer. A fan of the fine arts, Ferber offers intimate glimpses into the personalities of performers from James Dean to George S. Kaufman, and goes on to share her uncanny knack for having been consistently where the news of the day was breaking. She was in Washington the day President Roosevelt died, in London when the 8th Air Force launched its first long-range daylight raids, at Buchenwald and Nordhausen shortly after their liberation, and—more happily—in Paris on V.E. Day and in New York on V.J. Day. In these pages she recaptures that black-and-white insanity of that war and all wars, as well as the stifling, post-war complecency which gripped America at the time.

Customer Reviews

Amazing, delightful, most definitely magical… the human experience..

Edna captures the magic of the human experience, the wonder of it all…

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More books by edna ferber.

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September Book of The Month

The September Book of the Month is Odyssey of High Hopes by Cyrus A. Ansary .

August Book of The Month

The August Book of the Month is Deceptive Calm by Patricia Skipper .

April Book of the Month

The April Book of the Month is Raven's Peak by Lincoln Cole .

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The July Book of the Month is Demonslayer by Ian P. Eviston .

June Book of The Month

The June Book of the Month is Quest: Finding Freddie by Thomas Richard Spradlin .

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February Book of the Month

The February Book of the Month is The Diary Of An Immortal (1945-1959) by David J Castello .

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Based on your votes , the 2022 Book of the Year is A Brighter Tomorrow by Lori Schneider, MD .

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Based on your votes , the 2023 Book of the Year is Snatched Up to Heaven for Kids by Jemima Paul.

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The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Reviews Are In

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Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Was Originally Going to Be a Very Different Kind of Game

Zelda: echoes of wisdom - cuccos on the loose guide, suthorn ruins dungeon walkthrough - zelda: echoes of wisdom (all chests), key takeaways.

• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom features Princess Zelda as the main playable character for the first time.
• Players can capture the essence of items and enemies to use for exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat.
• The game has an impressive overall rating of 85, making it one of the highest-rated new game releases of 2024.

The reviews are in for the new Nintendo Switch exclusive game The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom , set to launch on September 26. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is taking the franchise in bold new directions. While it features a style of gameplay similar to classic Zelda games and an art style lifted from the Link's Awakening remake, Echoes of Wisdom also features plenty of brand-new ideas.

For one, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom features Princess Zelda as the main playable character instead of Link for the first time in series history. Secondly, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has a brand-new gameplay mechanic where players are able to capture the essence of items and enemies they encounter in the game world to then summon those things for exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat. The Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom gameplay videos have looked incredibly impressive, and now that the reviews are in, it's clear that the game has largely lived up to the hype.

Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom didn't start out its development as one might expect, with a very different direction initially planned for the title.

35 critic reviews have been counted for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom so far, earning the game an impressive 85 overall rating according to review aggregate site OpenCritic . This makes Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom one of the highest-rated new game releases of 2024, though it's not rated nearly as high as some other games in the series. Regardless, 85 is a great score, and it will be interesting to see how it fluctuates after more reviews are counted. Critics have praised the game's unique gameplay features and vibrant art style, while some have complained about performance problems when exploring the overworld.

Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review Scores

While 85 is a great score and indicates that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is indeed a great game, it's technically the lowest-rated new Zelda game released on the Switch. The Link's Awakening remake earned an 87, while Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both have 96. Again, it's possible that Echoes of Wisdom 's review score will fluctuate, and so there's a chance the game's score will end up closer to Link's Awakening when it's all said and done, though fans shouldn't expect it to get close to the extremely high scores enjoyed by Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom .

There are rumors that the GameCube-era Zelda games could be getting ported to the Switch, but there's a good possibility that Echoes of Wisdom will be the final Zelda game released for Nintendo's home console/handheld hybrid. If so, one has to imagine that the next Zelda is in the works for the Switch's successor, and when it's revealed to the world, it will be interesting to see how it stacks up compared to Echoes of Wisdom and the other Switch Zelda games.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

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The people of Hyrule are being stolen away by strange rifts—and with a certain swordsman among the missing, it’s up to Princess Zelda to save her kingdom in the latest adventure in The Legend of Zelda™ series! Team up with the ethereal creature Tri and use the Tri Rod to create “echoes,” which are imitations of things you find in the environment—then recreate those echoes whenever you like to solve puzzles and defeat enemies. Use echoes like water blocks to reach new heights, make bridges out of old beds, throw rocks at foes, or find your own combination of echoes to do things your way. You can even make echoes of monsters to fight at your side in combat!

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Christina Ricci’s Tarot Journey Before ‘Cat Full of Spiders’ Book Started When Filming ‘Now and Then’

Christina Ricci learned an important lesson on the path to creating her Cat Full of Spiders tarot deck and guidebook.

“It may feel like [an] answer came from magic, but it really didn’t,” she exclusively shared in the latest issue of Us Weekly while promoting her upcoming Cat Full of Spiders tarot deck and guidebook . “Our brains are what is magic.”

Ricci developed an interest in tarot after filming a scene for Now and Then where childhood friends visited a psychic for a reading.

“I just thought it was cool and interesting,” she recalled. “I personally love looking at things people view as mystical or magical and finding how it works in a more grounded way.”

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Call Full of Spiders offers fans a surrealist dive into Ricci’s cinematic subconscious with a set of 78 tarot cards. Ricci hopes those interested in tarot — and newcomers curious about the process — remember that they are in charge of their fate.

“Tarot is a great tool to employ self-reflection, self-knowledge, awareness and intuition to answer your own questions,” she added.

Cat Full of Spiders hits bookshelves on October 8. For more from Us ‘ exclusive interview with Christina Ricci, keep scrolling down and pick up the new issue of Us Weekly , on stands now.

What is it that you love about tarot? It’s a great tool to employ self-reflection, self-knowledge, awareness and intuition to answer your own questions. You pose a question and then draw the cards, and they bring up themes and ideas. When you apply them, you are combining your own self-knowledge to come up with the answer.

How has tarot helped you? It has always just been a fun hobby for me. The one thing tarot does do for me is help me to really know myself. As I’ve gone through my life, I’ve had more experiences, and that has changed my reaction to some of the cards. It reconnects me to who I am.

Related: '90s Stars Then and Now

What is the meaning behind the title Cat Full of Spiders? For me, it’s a metaphor. As the cat goes through life, it keeps eating spiders. And when the spiders in his belly get crazy and start going nuts, the cat feels anxious. If the spiders are sleeping, the cat feels calm and warm. So, it’s a metaphor for as we go through life, we collect all these memories, experiences, traumas, moments that then predict and influence the rest of our lives.

The guidebook explains each tarot card, from Death and the Hanged Man to Wheel of Fortune and the Magician — but this deck is special. Tell Us more about that. The idea was taking this deck and using me as the inspiration. There are complete stories for the characters involved. There are worlds and just really gorgeous, gorgeous illustrations. And so for me, it was important to have there be a lot more depth and dimension to this piece of art I’m putting out there in the world. [The goal is to] draw people’s attention to all the different versions of ourselves that we can be and how much is inside of one brain and one subconscious.

Who did you collaborate with on this project? My husband [ Mark Hampton , credited as the creative director] and I had this concept, like, three and a half years ago. We started working on it before we had a publisher! Then we found Felipe Flores , an artist whose work we felt best exemplified this idea. Then we all started collaborating with [tarot consultant] Minerva Siegel on the stories, the characters and the world.

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Related: Stars Who’ve Written Books

You have also teamed with West Elm on items that make this a whole experience. All the pieces we created — the tray, the smudge bowl, the smudge stick and two different candles — those are tools that help with a ritual. They set a mood, so you can focus.

Any plans to expand? I do think that this is just such a rich world we’ve created. I think there’ll be more to come from this but not necessarily another tarot deck.

What do you want readers to take away from Cat Full of Spiders? I hope it lends itself to people practicing more openness to the fact that we are all human beings with so much depth and complexity.

In this article

Christina Ricci

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