What is the importance of magic in the novel, This Is How It Always Is?

In Penn’s fairy tale, magic is first understood as a way to overcome the limits of possibility. What first seems impossible – Claude’s transformation into a girl – seems to be possible through the combined magic of fantasy and medical intervention. Corresponding to Penn’s developing understanding of what is right for Poppy, magic becomes something else: the miraculous and possible ability to transform reality by overturning society’s established ideas.