Exile to Mundania

did not need to hide my sexy novels from my mom, nor my copies of Cosmo, nor Go Ask Alice. What I hid were my Piers Anthony books — and I hid them from my boyfriend.

A Spell for Chameleon, the first Xanth book I ever read, is the story of a young man with no discernable magic talent living in a land populated by gryphons, harpies, centaurs, and other creatures of traditional fantasy. If Bink’s magical ability doesn’t show itself by adulthood, he faces exile to Mundania. Embarking on a quest to find his talent, he meets an angry sorceress, an evil magician, and three unusual women (or are there really three?) who befriend him and help him in different ways.

I read the sequel and most of the Xanth books after that, plus Anthony’s Adept series, and some of the Incarnations of Immortality as well. But when I met my first real boyfriend, I wanted to be the kind of girl he imagined he wanted. A girl who didn’t wear makeup, liked hard rock, enjoyed outdoor mountaineering type activities, and read the works of Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac. For the record, I love makeup, show tunes, and baking, and though I like Hunter S. Thompson, I’d take Anthony over Kerouac any day.

The thing about falling in love when you are seventeen: you haven’t yet figured out who you are. So when your significant person says, “Hey, don’t you love Kerouac?” you think, “Hmmm. I did fall asleep and feel annoyed most of the time I was reading On the Road, but maybe I did love it without really noticing, because it certainly was deep and I’m fairly sure I’m a deep person — and anyway, I’m outgrowing that kid stuff I used to like,” and so you answer him, “Yes. A total genius.”

You hide your Piers Anthony and your show tunes, too, and you almost forget how much you love reading because you’re trying to read books that other people think are cool, and you almost forget you love music because you’re listening to music other people like — and you almost forget those whole parts of yourself, until you find them one day in a cardboard box, and you’re finally old enough not to care what anybody thinks.

E. Lockhart’s latest book is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion).