The Review

The amazon preview for the Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines begins with a supercilious statement in the guise of humility: “I have always been one to play it safe.”  The veil is immediately pulled back when we find out that playing it safe has nothing at all to do with the story, because we are told that the one and only Chip Gaines is really driving the ship of their marriage and that he has less care for his own bodily safety than Hunter Thompson on a twelve-drug binge in Vegas.  Well, so much for being subtle.

Soon we find out that Chip has nefariously chosen to sell all of the family’s belongings in order to buy a used houseboat from a back-alley shyster.  Joanna is about ready to divorce Chip when suddenly a mysterious television producer calls.  We are told that Chip is convinced this call was a scam, given all of his college friends who were scammed into paying $1,000s for headshots.  But this was not the case when they find out the TV producer is legit and wants to setup a high-brow HGTV show called “Fixer Upper” where Chip and Joanna can argue about wood and put more letter lights and plants into remodeled houses than you’d find in a hipster coffee shop.

And then we are transported back to their first meeting in the middle of her father’s muffler shop.  We are told that Joanna’s friends all point out a hot guy in the muffler shop that she simply must meet.  In the biggest twist ever, the hot guy is not Chip Gaines.  We are never told what comes of this hot guy as he sweeps out of the muffler shop with an air of sultry mystery, and maybe we never really want to know.  But still, you have to wonder if he didn’t go off to become a certain mysterious CEO who keeps a torture room in his apartment and delights in making bad conversation with his secretaries.

Back at the muffler shop: at some point, a goofy-seeming guy named Chip Gaines eventually engages Joanna in a nice conversation about Baylor University.  This seems enough to build a relationship on, and so they do.  There are other things that happen in this preview and I’m sure they are really very interesting things, wrapped in precision woodwork like everything that comes from Magnolia eventually is (well that and the odd horror-story involving the hay silos that Chip will buy for some dark purpose).  It is a serviceable retelling that I’m sure devolves into a gripping exposé about the shady house and materials trading business that Chip and Joanna reign over as southern kingpins.

How it would have ended if I wrote the ending:

After more than a few years at the top of HGTV’s ratings, the Gaines become increasingly challenge-oriented. Chip, disillusioned by the seemingly endless number of hipster-chic remodels, decides that his next project is going to be a massive manor in a neglected Waco neighborhood, which he will try to restore to its original form.  The project instantly turns impossible as a rival HGTV show called “America’s Most Haunted Houses” also attempts to shoot in the space at the same time.  Every few days of the remodel, the project is halted for ectoplasm inspection and abatement, which cripples the budget and nearly leads Joana to divorce.

One day, Chip makes a terrible discovery.  He never expected to find a ghost under the floorboard during the remodel, but that’s exactly what he finds!  The charming ghost introduces itself as Mr. Trumwell, a 19th century gentleman who was savagely murdered in his dining room at the unfinished age of 45.  What follows is a murder mystery across the centuries.  Chip has plenty to learn about paranormal clue gathering and Mr. Trumwell is about the best teacher he can have.

Eventually, a box buried under Baylor University’s fabled football field is unearthed and opened up to reveal a series of gnarly correspondence between Trumwell’s widow Beatrix and a huckster who specialized in selling fake gold claims, named Bandford McGee.  The letters reveal that Beatrix was conned into believing that Bandford was working on a Grand Canyon orphanage that would give the children a view to grow up with.  Unbeknownst to Trumwell, Beatrix was slowly siphoning off the family fortune to help pay for the supposed orphanage.

One day, she decides to pay a visit to McGee and insists upon meeting the children.  McGee, who is significantly more than three sheets to the wind, drunkenly admits that there were never any orphans (in her letter to him afterwards, she states “I was much distressed to become cognizant of my follies, though not as shameful for it as I should have been.  As such, I have decided that the only item left to me is this wonderful estate, which I shall donate as a bequest upon the children that your orphanage should have assisted.  My only regret is that Mr. Trumwell shall have to suffer first in order that I may inherit the estate.”).

Trumwell is surprisingly calm about this discovery and decides to join Chip on his next dozen remodel projects as a secret inspector who can see the mold and termite damage behind walls simply by passing through them.  However, Chip becomes increasingly depressed by the mortal reminder of his ghostly friend and falls into a severe depression.

“You know, Trumwell, basically everything we do is irrelevant,” Chip laments one day.  “That house I remodeled yesterday will fall into disrepair in only one generation and will need to be remodeled again in a way that completely destroys my work.  Or worse, the property will be condemned and destroyed.  There’s basically no reason to do anything.”

What follows is a 100 page, Ayn Rand-styled discourse concerning the deep, un-abiding malaise that the world finds itself in, wherein Chip and Trumwell engage in philosophical dialogue that culminates in the following exchange:

“If I can’t be certain that these awesome houses I’ve remodeled will continue on, then how can I be certain of anything?  That David Hume guy has a point.  Prediction based on observation is a limited and futile way of reconciling reality.  There is almost no point to doing anything.”

“I somewhat agree,” Trumwell says.  “But you cannot let the indeterminate infirmity of human faculties form an obstacle of your continued existence.  Just because the stucco walls will fall in and out of favor; and just because someday we will no longer be able to tell the difference between actually-distressed wood and purposefully-distressed-looking wood, doesn’t make the progress of our work any less important.  You say that everything depends upon your flawed observations of reality, but the inability to know the future is itself a gift, Chip.  You cannot measure time in ephemeral gestures by staking on it a belief in absolute permanence.  Instead, you must appreciate every remodel project as you would every smile that your children bestow upon you—not for what it will be someday, but instead for what it is in that very moment.”

Chip breaks down in a good weep, humbly thanks the now-disappearing Trumwell, and goes on to live a lovely, if ephemeral, existence.