The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic

Familial Grief and Coping with Terminal Illness is a central theme of the novel, as its plot centers on Gigi’s death from cancer. Randall emphasizes the personal and drawn-out process of grief, which manifests differently for each individual in Gigi’s life. Because Gigi’s loved ones know she is dying for a long time, the must endure anticipatory grief even before they actually lose her. Even though the grieving process is highly individual, the characters benefit from each other’s mutual support. Randall emphasizes the collective experience of family grief.

Sadie’s experience of grief begins when Gigi reveals that she is dying. Randall represents Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s concept of the five stages of grief through Sadie’s progression through the experience. For example, her very first reaction to Gigi’s diagnosis is denial, as she searches for a way she can use magic to heal her grandmother. She decides to try and “heal a dead plant” or an injured animal for practice because “this would work. It had to” (57). Sadie’s attempts to heal Gigi are both a relatable experience of denial and indicative of one of her defining character traits: using her magic to help people while protecting herself from heartbreak. Sadie eventually realizes that she cannot use magic to save Gigi’s life, which prompts the anger and depression phases of her grief experience. Realistic descriptions of Gigi’s illness and death contrast the hoped-for magical solution Sadie had been seeking. For example, when Gigi starts talking about needing to cut her hair, Aunt Suzy talks about reading a hospital pamphlet when her own mother was dying about how “Toward the end, when they’re not completely lucid, they think they need to get ready for something, but they don’t know what” (191). By situating a realistic experience of illness in a magical world, Randall emphasizes the universality of death and familial grief.

Descriptions of the extended family experiencing their grief for Gigi together emphasize the power of loss to bring family together. After Gigi announces her illness to the family, Sadie observes that “their hearts were still breaking, but they were breaking together, and that was its own kind of beauty” (154). While the family members experience their grief individually, the event of Gigi’s death is what brings the family back together.

Randall also attends to the process of anticipatory grief—grieving someone before they are gone—that occurs with terminal illness. Seth tells Sadie “Don’t let your sorrow be her burden. Wait until she’s gone to mourn her” (182). Randall describes Sadie’s efforts to enjoy the time she has with Gigi while overcoming her initial grief and coping with her sadness. Randall emphasizes the stages of grief, the role of family in grief, and the uniquely difficult situation of terminal illness to suggest both the individual and universal nature of loss.