Explanation

As a result of the overzealous pruning of garden ivy I have developed RSI in my right hand and arm. The doctor has told me to rest them, which means for a few weeks I will not be posting. However I am reading and there will be a flurry of reviews as soon as I recover.

My apologies.

Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest

Filled with a rich cast of unforgettable characters, a powerful magical realist novel of an ordinary outback town made extraordinary.
 
"When Macha Connor came home from the war she walked into town as naked as the day she was born, except for well-worn and shining boots, a dusty slouch hat, and the .303 rifle she held across her waist."

 Macha patrols Siddon Rock by night, watching over the town's inhabitants: Brigid, Granna, and the melancholic men of the Aberline clan; the tailor Alistair Meakins, with his elegant fantasies; Sybil Barber, scrubbing away at the bloodstains in her father's butcher shop; Reverend Siggy, afraid of the outback landscape and the district's magical saltpans; silent Nell with her wild dogs; publican Marg, always accompanied by a cloud of blue; and the inscrutable new barman, Kelpie Crush. It is only when refugee Catalin Morningstar and her young son Josis arrive and stir up the town that Macha realizes there is nothing she can do to keep the townspeople safe.

Goodreads description

This is a novel by an author who clearly both understands and loves magic realism. You can see the influence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in this portrayal of a small town in the Australian outback. We are given the almost mythic birth of the town - I say almost mythic because of course this is magic realism and the magic mixes with the realism easily and without comment. Aborginal dream stories collide with Celtic legend, history becomes myth, perhaps through repeated telling, perhaps not:
stories are like people; they change shape as they get older.  Some get thinner with less detail, others pad out like the most comfortable grandmother.

And the magic continues into the time and setting of the main story of the two women, Catalin and Macha, who carry terrible memories of World War Two, and who discover that the horror that men are capable of can wait in the middle of the Australian bush. The landscape surrounding Siddon Rock with its stark beauty and brutal nature is in many ways a character in the book. Guest shows a small community that is almost trapped by it. Huge machines fail to work and rust like the hulking skeletons of dead dinosaurs in the salt-riddled land. Dust storms arrive and swallow the town. Dust is a theme in the book and there is a strong scene in which the Reverend Siggy bewilders his flock with a sermon about the dust. 

In this world it seems that woman are the stronger and more interesting characters - not just Macha and Catalin, but also Granna, the mysterious carer of the Abeline family, and Nell, the aboriginal woman who grows in stature at night. The men are less well drawn or are perhaps simply less strong. Siddon Rock comes with a large cast of characters and we move from one to the other, so it is perhaps not surprising if not all of them appealed to me equally. 

Structurally the novel is interesting. Perhaps taking a leaf out of Marquez's book, it does not follow the traditional three-part structure. Instead a canvas revealing the life of Siddon Rock is painted with the narrational climax coming late and without a conventional resolution, a climax which is foreshadowed throughout the book. 

I recommend this book to you.

Another Day by David Levithan

Every day is the same for Rhiannon. She has accepted her life, convinced herself that she deserves her distant, temperamental boyfriend, Justin, even established guidelines by which to live: Don’t be too needy. Avoid upsetting him. Never get your hopes up.

Until the morning everything changes. Justin seems to see her, to want to be with her for the first time, and they share a perfect day—a perfect day Justin doesn’t remember the next morning. Confused, depressed, and desperate for another day as great as that one, Rhiannon starts questioning everything. Then, one day, a stranger tells her that the Justin she spent that day with, the one who made her feel like a real person…wasn’t Justin at all.

In this enthralling companion to his New York Times bestseller Every Day, David Levithan tells Rhiannon’s side of the story as she seeks to discover the truth about love and how it can change you.

Goodreads description

I suspect that many authors, in addition to developing their stories from the point of the view of the protagonist, also explore their stories from the point of other major characters. I know I do. This allows the author to give psychological depth to all the main characters. What they don't do is write a companion novel telling the story from the other person's point of view. Unless you happen to be David Levithan. Is this self indulgent on the part of the author? Does it add enough to the reader's experience? The jury's out on that one, if you look at the reviews on Goodreads. I can't comment as I have not read Every Day - although it is on my Kindle. I am not sure I will read it now, which is not David Levithan's intention I am sure. 

The concept behind both books is that the character A is a being who inhabits the body of a different person a day. In Every Day the story is told from A's point of view, in Another Day from Rhiannon's. On the day A meets Rhiannon he is in the body of Justin and he falls for her. I say "he" but A can inhabit the bodies of girls as well, and indeed of transgender people. This creates a strong driver of the story, but it also raises issues about sexuality and identity, and love as opposed to physical attraction. There is also the philosophical question about how much A's day in a person's body/life should impact on that person's wider life. Fascinating stuff, and this is a novel that leaves you pondering bigger questions. As this is a book for the YA market (although this 50+ reader didn't feel that this inhibited her enjoyment) that is something to be particularly welcomed. 

The central character of Rhiannon is very well drawn. Her self esteem is not high and her relationship with the selfish and damaged Justin is lowering it. Encountering A in his various forms and falling for "him" allows Rhiannon to question her unhappy liaison's impact on her life. The philosophical questions in the book are therefore integral to the storyline.

Another Day is an interesting, thought-provoking and enjoyable book and I am grateful to the publishers for granting me a free review copy in return for a fair review.

Interview with Stephen Weinstock

I was due to review Stephen Weinstock's novel this week. However due to ill health I have had put that review off until later this year, so in the meantime I invited Stephen to be interviewed instead.

Welcome Stephen to the Magic Realism blog

Thank you, Zoe. I’m so pleased to be invited to be interviewed for the Magic Realism blog.  It’s a wonderful site; I loved participating in the bloghop this summer, and have enjoyed reading articles for a couple years.  I’m happy to help expand the interview section and hope other like-minded Magic Realism authors will step up and discuss their work.

Who are your favourite magic realist authors and why?

I would break this down into a few categories.  There were early influences of mine, before I even knew there was Magic Realism.  John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, a plain university coming-of-age novel where the main character is half-boy, half-goat, no questions asked, was a delight to read in college.  Discovering that someone like Borges could make fiction out of the wildest of ideas was a liberation.  And Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, which I might call surrealism before MR, has a quality that transcends it all: it’s the only work of fiction I have ever read that had me painfully, speechlessly, and ecstatically unable to continue reading because I was laughing so hard.

Another genre I love is the newly minted Visionary Fiction, and I feel there is a Venn diagram connection between many works in the two genres.  Castaneda’s work is a great example, and he started me off understanding the possibility of melding storytelling and higher, esoteric truths.

Finally, there is a set of favorites that represent the Magic Realism most akin to my series, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles.  In the series, a qaraq, a group of linked souls who have lived through 1001 lifetimes, meet up in the present and recall their past life stories, a la Scheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights.  Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveler’s Wife, with its magical premise and subsequent non-linear narrative in time, was a great inspiration to my laying out a karmic history spanning universes in a complex, non-linear fashion.  Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children affirmed a modern use of The Thousand and One Nights as fodder for contemporary magic.  And Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, sits on the nightstand, knowing it will fit in with where my brain is at.

What is your all-time favourite magic realist book?

But my greatest influence is Italo Calvino, and my absolute favorite book is his Cosmicomics, which follows the main character Qfwfq through his incarnations in the universe.  Each story is based on a scientific premise, the ‘realism,’ and is anthropomorphized, its ‘magic.’  So we learn what the universe was like when everything was at a single point, before the Big Bang, and no one could keep a secret.  Or follow the last dinosaur in a time when everyone has forgotten who they were.  It’s really all magical, because the science is so wondrous.  Also, technically speaking, Calvino is part of the French Oulipo school, all about mathematical games, hidden constraints, and word puzzles, but Calvino feels more Magic Realism to me.  Since every chapter of my book has someone recall a past life, they are often about inanimate objects or concepts, so I constantly pirate Calvino’s anthropomorphic literary technique.

Can you give us your definition of magic realism? 

MR is an oxymoron, and its oxymoronic quality is its simplest pleasure and defining quality.  When Marquez started things out with that image of the father unable to recall the names of things, and so every object in the house had a label, he opened up this clash of bizarre and ordinary.  What I love about the clash is that it makes you doubt what’s real and what’s magical.  Is the father’s condition a true psychological state worthy of Oliver Sacks, and so the whole world is realistic?  Or are those banal little signs on furniture and knickknacks enough to decorate a magical location? 

I also love how a basic unrealistic premise, like Gregor Samsa waking up as a cockroach, is all you need.  The author just accepts it as a given (as will the reader), and then the rest is the realistic consequences of that magical premise.  In my series, I assume the soul is immortal and that we live incarnation after incarnation.  If a group of people were aware in one lifetime of all their interconnected lifetimes, what would that do to them?  How would they assemble their history?  How would it change them in their present day ‘realistic’ world?  If you and I discovered we fought incessantly as atomic particles in the young, expanding universe, what would happen to our relationship as a therapist and patient in this life?

Tell us about your latest magic realist book?

The first book in my 1001 series is The Qaraq, the term for the group of linked souls who have shared lifetime after lifetime, and find themselves in suburban New Jersey, with an uncanny memory of their history together.  The suburban setting is the realistic backdrop humorously rubbing up against the magical premise of their immortality.  They wander into trance state recalling a past life story at children’s birthday parties, shopping at the mall, or in the supermarket freezer section (remembering an Ice Age narrative about a strangler ficus).

In the second book, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, due out soon, the group loses their ability to recall the past life tales.  This crisis leads them through a series of revelations about how everyday illusion, the Hindu concept of Maya, blocks their extraordinary visions of higher truth.  They literally grapple with Realism in order to get the Magic back.  The consequences of this struggle are rifts and jealousies and conspiracies within the qaraq.  Given its theme of endangered consciousness, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor is an example of the crossover between Magic Realism and Visionary Fiction.

Why do you write magic realism?

In many fantasy and sci-fi books, the key to the immortality of the soul is often revealed dramatically at the climax of the narrative.  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone builds up the mystery forever, which is why we love it, and then reveals the higher truth in the final pages.  I like the oxymoronic quality of Magic Realism, the casual assumption from Page One that Gregor is a roach, for it enabled me to accept reincarnation and immortality without any fuss (well, a little in Part One of The Qaraq), and then carry on into all the myriad psychological and structural consequences of the assumption.  What if you knew you were immortal, but still had to get the kids to school?  What if you remembered you and your friends’ past lives, even if it meant realizing you had been the sibling of the person you were hitting on at the pub?  Would you go mad?

I am also a structure junkie, my main motivation for creating the 1001 series, and this obsession gets back to Magic Realism ultimately.  Going back to Calvino and the Oulipo, I love the idea that there are hidden structures or constraints that I have to incorporate in each chapter.  There will be 1001 chapters in the series, each with a past life story someone recalls.  Within each of these tales, there is a reference to one of the 1001 Nights from that epic.  This gets complicated once you understand the history and structure and complexity of The Thousand and One Nights, but suffice it to say that I have to slip in a magic carpet or a dreaded serpent and make it work organically within the narrative. 

There are eleven of these hidden structures woven into the books.  Before you call my neighborhood mental health clinic, know that I actually start each chapter by considering these constraints, and they actually help me chart out and provide material for the chapter.  But I’ve always loved arcane, puzzle-like forms buried within books, music, or architecture, and I believe this is part of what makes the 1001 series Magic Realism.  That blurring of lines between the unreal and the real in this genre corresponds to the blurring of lines between what lies on the surface of the text and what lies beneath.  In The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, it’s about how everyday reality blurs the hidden ways of the world, but also how those hidden truths serve our everyday lives.  That’s the fun and the truth of Magic Realism to me.

BIO

In his past life before writing 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles, Stephen Weinstock created music for theater companies, choreographers, and dance studios (Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham).  He has worked as a musician/teacher at UC Berkeley, Princeton, Juilliard, NYU, and the ‘Fame’ school. For years he had the idea of a novel puzzling out an intricate past life history between a group of souls, but only with the epiphany of using the ancient frame tale structures of The Thousand and One Nights did he decide to jump fields.  By day he still bring dancers to ecstasy with his improvisations, but at night he enters the world of metempsychosis, time-honored storytelling, and worlds ranging from historical fiction to romantic fantasy.

See more of Stephen’s work, and the 1001 series, on his website. http://www.qaraqbooks.com

Join the free email service 1001/Qaraqbooks News, and find out when The Qaraq and the Maya Factor comes out, including a free giveaway: http://www.qaraqbooks.com/subscribe

The Incarnations by Susan Barker

Hailed as “China’s Midnight’s Children” (The Independent) this “brilliant, mind-expanding, and wildly original novel” (Chris Cleave) about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations over one thousand years haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soulmate.

"Who are you? you must be wondering. I am your soulmate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of sixteen million in search of you."

So begins the first letter that falls into Wang’s lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang’s previous lives—from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride, to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan, to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars, and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution—bound to his mysterious “soulmate,” spanning one thousand years of betrayal and intrigue.

As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him—someone who claims to have known him for over one thousand years. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher growing closer and closer…

Goodreads description

I often discuss why a novel I am reviewing is or is not magic realism, but in this case I will not do so. The reason for this is to avoid spoiling the plot for you. 

At the centre of the novel is the question: who or what is the writer of the letters that Driver Wang receives - letters that claim to come from the reincarnation of the character that Wang encountered in his several lives. This mystery drives the narrative on and has us, the readers, and Wang himself looking around for an explanation. The answer may or may not be magic realist. It is not a spoiler to say that the book is shot through with ambiguity - Wang had endured a spell in a mental hospital as a child, so could the arrival of the Watcher be part of a delusion?

The Watcher narrates Wang's previous incarnations and the interaction between the Watcher and Wang. Although the incarnations happened at different times in Chinese history and the incarnations are very different (Wang is a woman in one) there are some common themes to these accounts. The two characters are attracted to each other (they are often homosexual lovers) and yet one will always end up betraying and hurting the other.  The Watcher claims that the letters are an attempt to bring a halt to this. As a writing device this means that Barker's novel is able to span the long and brutal history of China while keeping focused on one person. The letters are in effect a series of related short stories. 

The letters are interspersed into the account of Wang's life in contemporary China and his unsatisfactory home and work life. Wang's childhood and youth are recounted in a series of flashbacks that help explain why this potential high flyer drives taxis for a living and why he had a breakdown. Wang is struggling to cope with his current life: it is asking a lot for him to take on his other lives. The book is a study in how to draw a psychological profile of a character, as understanding Wang becomes possibly as important to the reader as the identity of the Watcher. 

Susan Barker's book is a stunning piece of writing, weaving the various threads in a way that enhances rather than hinders the plot and pace. The historical elements are beautifully if horrifyingly well-drawn. 

I received this book free from the publisher in return for a fair review.

Video - Isabel Allende on Gabriel Garcia Marquez

After the death of the great Gabo - Isabel Allende gave this interview to Democracy Now about the importance of Marquez "the master of masters" to South America and to her personally: "It was as if someone was telling me my own story."

It's a fascinating interview and includes some clips from an interview with Gabo himself.

A School For Fools by Sasha Sokolov

By turns lyrical and philosophical, witty and baffling, A School for Fools confounds all expectations of the novel. Here we find not one reliable narrator but two “unreliable” narrators: the young man who is a student at the “school for fools” and his double. What begins as a reverie (with frequent interruptions) comes to seem a sort of fairy-tale quest not for gold or marriage but for self-knowledge. The currents of consciousness running through the novel are passionate and profound. Memories of childhood summers at the dacha are contemporaneous with the present, the dead are alive, and the beloved is present in the wind. Here is a tale either of madness or of the life of the imagination, in conversation with reason, straining at the limits of language; in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, “an enchanting, tragic, and touching work.”

Goodreads description

As I read this book I was reminded of a formative time in my life. I had left university only to become ill and as I waited for an operation I spent my time reading and watching films on television. One of the books I read was One Hundred Years of Solitude and so began my love of magic realism. One of the films I watched was Tarkovsky's film The Mirror. I was in the right state of mind for both book and film. I had time. I was willing to let go of expectations and experience these remarkable works of art. The experience was almost a mystical one.  

A School for Fools reminds me of Tarkovsky's film. Maybe this is partly because of its non-linear structure, the poetry, the disorientation, the slowness even, the focus on a young man growing up. It also reminds me of these things because you have to be in the right state of mind. I am not sure I was/am in the right "zone" to really appreciate the book. Perhaps the pressure of having to read and review a book a week for this blog played against me. The book is complex and full of symbols and not by any means an easy read. Nevertheless I was able to appreciate much of what it had to offer, if not fully enjoy it. 

At the centre of the novel is the narrator, or should I say two narrators, because the book's central character is a young man with schizophrenia and two distinct personalities, Pavel and Savl (Paul and Saul of the Bible), and the narration flicks between them in a sort of internal or possibly external dialogue. But the duality of the book doesn't stop there as we see the world through Pavel's eyes and find that other characters have two personifications. 

Pavel also has a problem with linear time and the narrative jumps backwards and forewards  without warning. Pavel can be at once a schoolboy at a special school (the school for fools of the title) and a successful engineer wooing a woman. I took that to mean he is at once the schoolboy and what he should have been. This is psychological magic realism of the first order.

Other elements of magic realism include the butterflies Pavel collects, which appear in the winter as well as in the summer. The schoolteacher and the boy's idol, the inhabitant of a dacha on the other side of the river, is able to be both alive and dead.  The river is identified by Pavel as the river Lethe. 

With so many magic realism books to read I seldom allow myself the luxury of saying that I intend to read a book again, but I do want to return to this book. I will do so when the time is right and my mind is able to fully grasp the book's brilliance. 

I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in return for a fair review. 

Magic Realism Video No 2 - Salman Rushdie

In this short video Salman Rushdie really hits the spot when talking about magic realism: "Once you accept that stories are not true, once you start from that position, then you understand that a flying carpet and "Madam Bovary" are untrue in the same way, and as a result both of them are ways of arriving at the truth by the road of untruth, and so then they can both do it the same way."

The video is part of a longer interview with Rushdie in which he also talks about computer games, linear storytelling, inspiration, Islam and terrorism, and more. You can find the full-length video on the excellent Big Think website here: http://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-salman-rushdie.

The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster by Scott Wilbanks

Annabelle Aster doesn’t bow to convention—not even that of space and time—which makes the 1890s Kansas wheat field that has appeared in her modern-day San Francisco garden easy to accept. Even more peculiar is Elsbeth, the truculent schoolmarm who sends Annie letters through the mysterious brass mailbox perched on the picket fence that now divides their two worlds.

Annie and Elsbeth’s search for an explanation to the hiccup in the universe linking their homes leads to an unsettling discovery—and potential disaster for both of them. Together they must solve the mystery of what connects them before one of them is convicted of a murder that has yet to happen…and yet somehow already did.

Goodreads description

Last week as part of the Magic Realism Bloghop I interviewed Scott Wilbanks, author of The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster.  If you haven't already done so, do read the interview here: http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com/2015/07/interview-with-scott-wilbanks.html.  As you can see from the interview Scott has a quirky sense of humour. This also appears in his novel. In his interview Scott talks about what he considers to be magic realism. In this book the magic comes from time travel. Time travel arguably is a magic realism subgenre (or should that be sub subgenre?) with Audrey Niffenegger's Time Traveller's Wife appearing second in a list of 100 favourite magic realist books on Goodreads (between One Hundred Years of Solitude and House of Spirits.

There is another interview with the author at the back of the book, which includes an explanation of the title. It turns out that lemoncholy is a real Victorian word meaning melancholy. I am not sure that I would describe Annie's life as melancholy. She seems a pretty self-sufficient and emotionally resilient to me, making the most of a bad hand in life. And she has the lovely Christian as her best friend, a vulnerable but emotionally generous young man. Annie attracts a group of loners and misfits around her as allies in her quest to defeat the evil Mr Culler. Most of them are very well drawn, the exception is Annie's love interest, Nathaniel (but that may only be in the context of the others). One criticism/suggestion I might make is that even where you have a character, such as Cap'n or Edmond, who has shadows in the past they side with Annie too easily, without too much of a struggle. I was waiting for a crisis of some kind, even a betrayal, but they never came. This means that the dramatic tension was mainly generated by the actions of the baddies - Culler and his associate Danyer. Culler is an arch villain - pyschopathic without any redeeming feature. There is a plot twist at the end of the book about Danyer which I will not reveal, but let me just say that I didn't see it coming. 

The other generator of tension is around trying to work out what the consequence of Annie interfering with the past will be. Scott Wilbanks is obviously having fun with the concept and plot possibilities created by time traveller. If anything he has too much fun with the concept and the characters. I felt that he could achieved more with less. Nevertheless this is a fun take on time travel with a feisty heroine and some excellent supporting characters. 

I received a free copy of this novel from the publisher in return for a fair review.

Interview with Scott Wilbanks

Next week I will be reviewing The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster but this week I am interviewing the book's author Scott Wilbanks.

1. Who are your favourite magic realist authors and why?

Thanks for interviewing me, Zoe.  And try not to chuckle too hard at my responses. (Eye rolls are optional.)

Many will think I’m off my rocker for including him on the magical realism shelf, but A.A. Milne would have to be at the top of my list, primarily because his protagonist embodies our greatest virtue—humanity—and yet he is not human. He’s a teddy bear, a living, breathing instructional guide who teaches us how to live in the present with his philosophy of innocence. And while he lacks a beating heart, he is the more alive than anyone I know.

2. What is your all-time favourite magic realist book?

And that would be The Complete Tales of Winnie-The-Pooh, not only for the reason I listed above, but because—for me, at least—it is a time-travel portal.  (And you know how I love time-travel portals.) I don’t merely read the book, I dream it.  

And when I dream, I relive the charms of my childhood. Of those books I’ve read with an adult audience in mind, I’d have to say Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus has come the closest to duplicating the wakeful dream state I experienced with Winnie The Pooh. I didn’t even bother to close the book cover when I’d finished it, and simply flipped back to the first page to start all over again.

3. Can you give us your definition of magic realism?

I learned from the onset that defining magical realism is a slippery endeavor. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and no two are alike. I’m not even sure it can be defined—concretely, anyway.  If forced, I’d simply say that it involves any artistic enterprise in which fantastical elements seep into an otherwise realistic world. 

And while I may have trouble defining it, I do have a tried-and-true barometer. It’s anything within the arts containing fantastical elements that sneaks under my mom’s radar. I’m not kidding.

She’s a realist to the core who doesn’t simply dislike fantasy, she has a deep-down-in-the-bones loathing for it. She wants the world within any literature she reads to be rational, and her range is… narrow. If a novel containing any sort of fantastical element passes her sniff test, it’ll be magically realistic.

4. Why do you write magical realism?

Strangely enough, it all goes back to Tolkien. He’s the reason I became a book-a-day nerd by the age of fourteen—all of it sci fi and fantasy—while simultaneously fuelling my outside-the-lines imagination.

It was inevitable, then, that fantasy would inevitably splatter all over the page when I decided to try my hand at writing. It presented a challenge, however. I wanted my mom to read whatever it was that I wrote so I decided to infuse the magic in a world with trees and people and sounds she’d understand.

5. Tell us about your latest magic realist book?

My current work-in-progress recounts the misadventures of a young, Southern man who is burdened with the world’s only confirmed case of chronic, incurable naiveté—the result of a curious subtype of ADD and a lightning strike at the age of four.  A veritable magnet for con artists, he is reduced to becoming a shut in and a night owl.

Thank you, Scott.

Scott's online/social media links are:

Website: scottbwilbanks.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scott.wilbanks.7

Twitter: @scottbwilbanks

 

Magic Realism Videos - Lois Zamora

This post is part of the Magic Realism Bloghop 2015. It is also the first in a new series of blog posts that I am planning for this blog. Every weekend over the next year I plan to bring you a video about magic realism.

My aim is to comb You Tube and other sites to find a wide variety of videos that will expand your understanding of the genre. Some will be interviews with magic realist writers, some writer profiles, some animations of magic realist fiction and some will be academic lectures. We start the series with an excellent example of the latter.

The University of Houston has made available online (in this case on You Tube - but it is also available on the University's own website) a course delivered by magic-realism specialist Professor Lois Zamora. There are 25 (yes 25) lectures on the course. The course title is Contemporary Literature - Magic Realism. The focus is on a number of key magic realist books: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez), Labyrinths (Borges), The Kingdom of this World (Carpentier), Tracks (Erdrich), Ceremony (Silko) and The House of Spirits (Allende). But it also touches on magic realism in art and its influence on the concept of magical realism in literature.

Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community by Professor Zamora and Wendy B. Ferris is the classic textbook on the subject. So these videos are the perfect way to study the genre.

I have included videos number one (above) and two (below), which focus on What is Magical Realism.

You can view the other lectures here: http://freevideolectures.com/Course/2608/The-Contemporary-Novel-Magical-Realism/

Summary of lecture contents:
Lectures 3, 4 and 25 - The Art Historical Beginnings of Magical Realism
Lectures 5, 6, 7, 8 and the first half of 9 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Lectures Second half of 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 - Jorge Luis Borges
Lectures 14, 15, 16 - Alejo Carpentier
Lectures 17, 18, 19 - Louise Erdrich
Lectures 20, 21 and beginning of 22 - Leslie Marmon Silko
Lectures 22, 23, 24 - Isabel Allende and Magical Feminism

The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, renowned as a master of magical realism, creates stories that grip the imagination. Set in exotic locals, peoples with unforgettable characters, and crafted with exquisite prose, his stories transport the reader to a world that is at once fanciful and real.

One of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, the novel is overflowing with symbolic descriptions as it vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator embodies at once the best and the worst of human nature.

Goodreads description

This novel by the great Gabo himself comes with a reputation for being hard work and dark. And to be sure The Autumn of the Patriarch deals with the darkest of subjects - inside the mind of a psychopathic dictator. So I was nervous as I settled down to read this book in advance of this review. I needen't have worried. Afterall this is a book by the master.

First of all I had to develop a new way of approaching reading the book. The Autumn of the Patriarch is made up of six huge chapters, each consisting of one paragraph. Sentences can go on for pages and are divided almost exclusively with commas (the semicolon is discarded). And within these sentences the narrative voice can shift from the Patriarch's to another character to the general mass of the Patriarch's subjects like a Greek chorus without either punctuation or formating signposting. 

Clearly you cannot read this book anywhere where you will be interrupted, but even so I soon found myself relaxing into the book and not worrying when I lost sense of who was speaking. There is a reason for that - the subject of the entire narration is the omnipresent Patriarch. The nation is an extension of the Patriarch. Or at least that is how he sees the world - he is totally self-centred - and it is one reason that The Autumn of the Patriarch is a "poem on the solitude of power" as Garcia Marquez has described it. 

It is a tribute to the author's genius that I found myself at times feeling sympathy for the monstrous Patriarch. He is a man who cannot feel love. He is also a man for whom the power he seeks and clings too brings no joy:

but he learned to live with those and all the miseries of glory as he discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived without surprise at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of
being exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority.

The book opens with the people he rules breaking in to the palace to find his body. They cannot believe that he has died: afterall he has already died once. That first death was when the Patriarch's double is killed and he watches his subjects' response to his "death" - some grieving, some celebrating. When he reappears he takes typically brutal action against the latter. So it is not surprising that his subjects are cautious when he dies a second time. He has magically lived longer than a normal mortal. Can he die?

The book focuses on the Patriarch after his first death, in the autumn of his years to his end. Of course the book moves backwards and forwards in time without warning, as you would expect, but a portrait of the old man evolves as layer upon layer of story are applied. The story is at times grotesque (but no more grotesque than reality, as the stories of dictators like Idi Amin or Caligula or Pinochet show us). The cruelty of the Patriarch is likewise all too true to life. People are tortured, killed and disposed of. The shocking fate of several thousand innocent children, whose only crime was to have drawn the numbers of the lottery that the Patriarch always won, is perhaps the hardest to take. 

At the same time there is a crude gallows humour about the book, which at once relieves and heightens the horror. Some of that humour comes from the Patriarch himself: 
the day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole. 

The book reveals that the Patriarch came from a poor background, and there may have been a time when he had some sympathy for the underclass. He is set up by the British as a puppet and then they abandon him and the island. He doesn't use their departure to restore the island's fortunes but to plunder them as the British did. Towards the end of the book we learn that the Americans too have exploited the country and brought it so much into debt that they demand and get the sea surrounding the island in payment. This is magic realism as political comment as well as an exploration of the psychology of the individual. 

This is an amazing book. Whether it is a pleasurable read is another matter.

This review is my first contribution to the Magic Realism Bloghop 2015. I am planning two more posts on this blog and there are plenty more posts on the hop to be enjoyed (see below).

The Catalain Book of Secrets by Jessica Lourey

Faith Falls is a snug little Minnesota town constructed over a mystery, a place where the most impressive building is a gorgeous Queen Anne with turrets, cantilevered gables, and a wraparound porch. In a concealed room beneath the twisting stairs of the Queen Anne lies the Catalain Book of Secrets, the repository of the wisdom the Catalain women have gathered since the beginning of time.

Ursula Catalain, current keeper of the Book of Secrets, is content to concoct spells in her garden cottage until the ghost of the man she murdered when she was 12 appears at her door in a new form. His return pulls Jasmine, Ursula's daughter, back into the fold. Once believed to be the most powerful of the Catalains, she foreswore her gift years before to bury a shameful secret. The ghost of the murdered man also calls home Katrine, Jasmine's sister, who has been banished for fourteen years. Finally able to return to Faith Falls and the beloved Queen Anne, Katrine must claim her true Catalain power to save her mother and sister from the dark family curse.

Told in a majestic mosaic of strong women’s voices, The Catalain Book of Secrets weaves together alchemy, hope, tragedy, and true love to spin a tale in the style of Garden Spells, Eva Luna, and Practical Magic.

Extract from the Goodreads description

The description makes major claims: a book that is in the style of Garden Spells (by Sarah Addison Lee), Eva Luna (Isabel Allende) and Practical Magic (Alice Hoffman). The trouble is that whilst all three of these books are magic realist books with strong female characters they are very different and appeal to different readerships. Of these readerships I think the Addison Lee crowd are the ones who are going to have most problems - with the rape that forms a major plot element in the book and with Ursula's sexual promiscuity. You know that I do not have a problem with grittiness in a story (it's one of the reasons I like Alice Hoffman) but others will and I don't understand why you would invite Addison Lee readers to buy the book.

So what did I make of The Catalain Book of Secrets? There is a lot of magic in this book - all the Catalain women are witches and each has a different form of magic. One makes magic food, one brews potions in the garden shed, one makes magic sweets, one sees people's potential, another their emotional wounds... Usually in magic-realist books (particularly of this type) the central characters will have one form of magic. Add to this that the Catalain witches are fighting a demon and I begin to wonder if this is close to being urban fantasy or something similar. 

A main theme of the book is that of sisterhood both in the literal sense but also in the sense of the sisterhood of women in the face of violent men. As the Catalain Book of Secrets says:

Nothing multiplies your power like a sister.   

 And the converse is also the case: what weakens women's power are secrets kept from one another, silence in the face of male abuse, and the rivalry and tensions we feel for one another. When the Catalain women act on their own, they are too weak  to take on the male demon, but when all seven act together...

The mother/daughter relationship is also explored with both Ursula and Jasmine trying not to be like their mothers and making different mistakes. As a mother and a daughter that theme rings very true to me.

This is a more demanding book than those by Addison Lee and similar cosy magic realism writers. Not only because you are made to think, but also because of the narrative style. The book is written from the points of view of the main characters and moves between them. There is also some movement in the time settings. This does have the effect of slowing the book a bit as we get up to pace with the different characters, but after a while the story really kicks off. The author's slightly poetic style of description also might slow things for some people, but I enjoyed her turns of phrase - there are some particularly good descriptions of taste as you might expect given the food magic. 

I understand that this is Jessica Lourey's first magic-realist book and one which she used crowdfunding to publish - she already has a successful career as a writer of mysteries. I am fascinated to find out why she decided to diversify into magic realism and will be interested to see what she produces next.

I recieved a free review copy from the author in return for a fair review.

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again.

Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band’s manager—meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?

Goodreads description

Can a ghost story be magic realism? And if not, why not? 

This book rang a lot of bells for me. I spent my teenage years listening to Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and Led Zeppelin. I was into ancient British customs and mythology (especially Celtic legends), wore Celtic crosses, Indian cotton blouses and layered skirts, I even had the ubiquitous Afghan coat which smelled when it rained.  The posters that lined my bedroom wall were of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (if you are over 50 you will know the one I am referring to) and sensitive poetic lead singers. Oh yes, I would have been a fan of Julian Blake and band. Elizabeth Hand is of my generation and I guess that she too was into the same things as I. She certainly knows how to conjure up the atmosphere of the time. 

This realism is added to by the narrative style - a series of short chapters each part of an interview with one of the surviving characters. These build to create a picture of the events of that summer. It took me a little while to form an image of the characters and to hear their voices, but they are generally well-drawn and distinct and so I soon settled back into the story. 

Other aspects of the story are more predictable, indeed regular, parts of any ghost story:  a tumbledown labyrinthine abandoned manor house, strange local customs, the locals coming out with cryptic comments which give the impression that they know something of the hall's dark secrets but aren't saying, and even a naive bunch of teenagers fascinated with the occult. I had the added insight that I know enough about the traditions and myths referenced by the book to see where things were heading. With the exception of one sentence (which I will not reveal to avoid spoiling the book for you) I was not surprised by the climax of the story, however that did not worry me or dent my enjoyment.

All of which brings me back to my opening questions? I think the answer to the first question is yes, ghost stories can be magic realism. And to the second: why can't they? Just because these are British traditions and beliefs and not those of Latin Americans or any other ethnic group, why are they not acceptable as magic in the magic realist sense? It is precisely because ghost stories are moored in a deep British collective subconscious that they work so well. 

You will note that I say ghost stories can be magic realism and not that they all are. Wylding Hall certainly is magic realism as far as I am concerned. This is because of the realism in the book, which is partly down the way the narrative works. The voices are real. They also differ in their interpretation and even in their accounts. There is an ambiguity about the conclusion to the story and how the characters feel about Julian. I would go so far as to say that despite the ghost story/horror set-up the book isn't actually about what really happened to Julian. For this reason the predictability I refered to earlier does not matter. For me the book is about the dynamic of the group and their relationship with the missing man, the way they are still trying to come to terms with and explain not only Julian's disappearance but also with him their ability to regain the magic of the music generated in the sessions at Wylding Hall. 

I really enjoyed this book and thank Open Road Media for granting me a copy of the book free in return for a fair review.

The Missing Body Parts of Mr Doherty by Luke Kondor

Every day Paddy Doherty wakes up to find another body part missing. Before he disappears completely, he wants to leave something of value in the world - a detailed guide on finding love.

 Amazon description

In Gogol's short story the main character loses a nose, in Luke Kondor's short story (some 50 pages long) the losses start with an arm and just carry on happening. Kondor's book is therefore in the tradition of surreal European magic realism, that includes Gogol, Kafka and Bulgakov.

The story is narrated in the first-person by Paddy Doherty himself. He proves to be a witty and it turns out a none-too-reliable narrator.  His guide to the sixteen ways to a girl's heart turns into an account of his life and relationships, which it emerges haven't been very successful. Doherty's accounts are laugh-out-loud amusing at time, his narration has a habit of subverting itself when it is getting too serious:

I couldn't tell you exactly what happened, but I felt like I experienced what some people refer to as the Aleph - a point where everything, the whole universe is contained - or it could've been the dodgy falafel I'd eaten. 

This is just one example from the book of how Kondor's writing works on several levels. The comment about the Aleph, I am sure, references the short story by Coehlo. And how about this:

And then I saw a man in the street doing a handstand, he reminded me of an old friend. I tried to applaud him, because I was clapping with one hand - the right one. 

The image of the man doing a handstand returns late on in the story by the way. 

So why is Paddy disappearing piece by piece? The doctor has a theory: that Paddy has never given himself to something completely, so his body is giving itself with or without his permission. Maybe the answer is to give heart to someone or something. Or maybe the theory is bullshit, as Paddy says to the medic. I hope it isn't.

2015 Magic Realism Blog Hop Sign Up

Calling all bloggers!

Last year as part of our Magic Realism Blog Hop we had 25 posts about magic realism spread over a wide variety of blogs and it was fascinating. If you are interested in taking part this year, please sign up below.

All you have to do to take part is write a post about any aspect of magic realism on your blog and programme it to appear on one of the three days. I will provide you with some code to put at the bottom of the post which will automatically generate a list of other posts on the hop. And I will email you with instructions and will help if you have any problems (most people don't).

If you want to get an idea of what you might write: here's the link to the first post in last year's hop: http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com/p/useful-resources-about-magic-realism.html 
The links to all the posts on the hop are at the bottom of that post, hop around the blogs and see what people wrote about last year.

And if you like the idea click on the button below to add your blog to the list for this year (at the bottom of this post).

Please do copy the bloghop logo above and feature it on your blog to advertise the hop to your readers.

Any questions, just email me on zoe.brooks@googlemail.com

Alburquerque by Rudolfo Anaya

Abrán González always knew he was different. Called a coyote because of his fair skin, the kid from Barelas found escape through boxing and became one of the youngest Golden Gloves champions. But the arrival of a letter from a dying woman turns his entire life into a lie. The revelation that he was adopted makes him feel like an orphan and sends him on a quest to find his birth father.

With the help of his girlfriend, Lucinda, and Joe, a Vietnam veteran, Abrán begins a journey that hurls him from the barrio into a world of greed and political corruption spearheaded by Frank Dominic, a con artist running for mayor with visions of building El Dorado on the Rio Grande.

Rudolfo Anaya’s vibrant novel celebrates a land and a people struggling to preserve and reshape ancient tradition. Rich in spirituality and sense of place, Alburquerque cuts across class and ethnic lines to tell a story of hope and displacement, love and regret, and the age-old quest for roots, identity, and family.

Publisher's description

This is one of nine of Anaya's books republished as ebooks by Open Road Media. Anaya is best known for his novel Bless Me, Ultima, which I reviewed on this blog here. Open Road are to be applauded for bringing more books by this Chicano magic-realist author back into circulation and I welcome the opportunity to read and review his work again

The book's themes are familiar ones - a young man trying to find out who he is, corporate and political corruption and abuse of the environment, a love interest, the contrast between the old ways of local peoples and the new ways of the white population. These are all themes we have seen in other magic-realist books. I was reminded of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko in particular, which also features a native American Vietnam veteran. 

Magic is definitely present, coming with a prescient traditional healer or curendara. The curendara at the beginning of the book gives Abran the answer to his question "tú eres tú" or you are you, but it takes him the length of a book to understand what she is saying. Ultima in Anaya's previous novel is also a curendara. This female archetype also appears in one of my favourite Chicano magic-realist novels The Hummingbird's Daughter.  The second form of magic realism in the book is the way the characters of the novelist Ben Chavez have a life of their own. Many writers will tell you that their characters talk to them, well in this case they really do. And the last element of magic realism is the appearance of the Coyote figure from indigenous American tribal mythology. All of these elements work well.

It is perhaps the realism I have a problem with. There are times where it feels unreal, too much in the mode of popular culture, particularly at the end  - the book climaxes with a boxing match a la Rocky Bilboa. The Hollywood treatment is popular but it is unrealistic.

I would have liked the characters to be less black and white, more complex and ambiguous. Looking back at my review of Bless Me, Ultima I realise it was an issue I had with that book too. The most important theme in the book to my mind is the importance of knowing one's roots. Does it matter? And where are your roots? Are they in the genes or are they learned? This question not only relates to Abran's relationship with his adoptive parents and his genetic ones, but also to the story's villain, Frank Dominic, who has reinvented himself. By making Frank Dominic a black-hat baddie, Anaya misses a chance to develop the theme. Neverthless it is a tribute to the book that I am thinking about the question.

I missed this book when it appeared and I am grateful to Open Media for contacting me about it. I received a free copy in return for a fair review.

The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior by Stephanie Hammer

Just down the road from John Crowley’s characters is the town of Narrow Interior, the setting for Stephanie Hammer’s fable-ous first novel of secrets and heritage. Henry, the youngest son of a hotel magnate, is sent to calm the inhabitants as the hoteliers set about to despoil this odd byway. Instead, aided by his black sheep cousin and a cast of quirky characters, including Quirk, Henry sets out to discover the town secrets. The more he learns, the darker his mission appears, until Henry must choose if he is willing to risk all.

Goodreads description

The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior has much in common with Magic America (see my last review). It starts with magic realism as the world seen through the eyes of a child; it features a fight against American big business whose plans are endangering a community; it even has a magic realist tattoo! But in many ways it is very different. In contrast to Magic America the frequency of magic increases through the course of the book, so much so that the book moves away from magic realism towards fantasy à la Neil Gaiman. 

The book can be categorized in many ways - there is a strong streak of humour and satire here, which had me chuckling at times; there are a lot of references to classic philosophers and writers (including Schiller and Goethe as talking condiment pots), legends (Parsifal and the Fisher King anyone?) and then there's surrealism (I was reminded of Leonora Carrington's writing at times). In fact there is so much going on and Stephanie Hammer is having so much fun in writing the story that sometimes I felt the book failed to deliver completely on its promise(s). But then how could it?

I personally was interested in the puppets strand, which disappointed as did the religious backstory to the community of Narrow Interior.  The two elements are related and so much more could have been done with them. Puppet theatre has always had a relationship with religion and not just in Japan: marionette means little Maria and the shadow puppets of South Asian portray tales from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. I worked for several years as the manager of the Puppet Centre of Great Britain and in that capacity saw the power and magic of puppets, nowhere more evident than in the ancient Japanese art of Bunraku, which the novel draws from, but doesn't explore.

The book could have been simply a book of ideas, but the characterization is strong and amusing. We engage with Henry from the get-go and even as he decides to hide his character (So, I become secret. I study unspecialness and silence. While most people in American work to develop ersatz talents, individualistic quirks, and even the occasional eccentricity, I let mediocrity shine like a beacon of nothingness. A black hole of personality.) we empathize and yearn for the real Henry to reappear.  But again I felt that the author engaged our interests in certain characters (most notably Quirk and the old man Olsen) only to let them drop. 

So, in conclusion, what did I make of this book? I enjoyed it, it is a fun and interesting read, but I don't think it is magic realism.

I received this book from the publisher in return for a fair review.

Magic America by C E Medford

Hope lives in an alternative Trenton, New Jersey of the 1980s where radioactive cats, congenital tattoos, biker angels, cocky fairy godmothers and the determination to survive another day are all that stand between her family and the creeping chemical forces of LoboChem, a manufacturer willing to destroy all that is beautiful for the sake of a profit.

Magic America is a story about coming of age in fluorescent, urbo-suburban, magic-realism America. Dust off your Wigwams and your high-tops, your banana clips and Aquanet, for a trip through the streets and skies of a Garden State where love triumphs over fear, faith is what you die with and family is who you ride with.

Goodreads description

Magic America is a fascinating take on magic realism. Set in urban blue-collar America, it reminded me of the magic realism of Paul Magrs, which is set in a similar setting in an northern British city. The two writers show that magic realism can work in the portrayal of the white working class. The magic in the book comes without comment - that's just the way it is in magic America. There's a baby who inherits congenital tattoos from his biker father, and a fairy godmother with attitude appears when Hope needs her and sometimes when she doesn't want her to.

Central to the book is the issue of abuse of the environment by LoboChem, which is poisoning Hope's world and community. As I have observed elsewhere in this blog an environmental theme often features in modern magic realism. C.E. Medford's approach is a interesting one. The reader is not always clear whether something strange is magic realism or whether it is the product of the poisoning of the environment or genetic alteration. This ambiguity is enhanced by the use of first-person narration. Hope is still young when the book opens and we see the world through her eyes. A child's eyes see magic in the world and young Hope is no different. As Hope matures through the book, some things are given realistic explanations and some remain magic.

The author's style of writing is likewise a mixture of realism (sometimes gritty) and poetic prose and it works really well. If I were to criticize, I found the transitions between the different periods in Hope's life jolted and these narrative stutters did not stop me enjoying the book. Chronological transitions can be a problem with coming-of-age stories, one which I am familiar with as an author. Nevertheless I identified with Hope and her extended family of oddballs and was on their side in their battle against evil big business which has stitched up local politics and economics. This is as much magic realism of the oppressed as any novel set in South America.

I received this book free from the author in return for a fair review.

Interview with Lily Iona MacKenzie

1. Who are your favourite magic realist authors and why?

I’m attracted to a wide range of magical realist styles, from Haruki Murakami, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, to Mikhail Bulgakov. But the Latin American authors first attracted me to this genre, and they’re the ones I frequently return to. I’ve read all of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ work. So, too, with Chilean writer Roberto Bolano. Jorge Luis Borges is always a challenge. I’ve just discovered another Chilean writer, Alejando Zambra, who flirts with this style.  Carlos Fuentes. Mario Vargas Llosa.  Julio Cortázar How to stop! These writers aren’t afraid to wallow in unreality or to speculate on where the lines between realism and unrealism are drawn. If there is such a line, it’s constantly shifting, just as reality can’t be pinned down. Was that an ice cream cone I saw woman eating in a newspaper photo, or did it only have the appearance of a cone. Was it actually corn on the cob? It’s often difficult to pin down the difference between appearances and reality, which is why so many writers have focused on this theme whether they fit into the magical or realist vein.

2. What is your all-time favourite magic realist book?

Again, it’s difficult to pick just one favorite magical realist book because I’ve liked so many. One Hundred Years of Solitude still mesmerizes me. In that novel, Marquez not only portrays an important era in Colombia’s history, but he also creates a family that has mythic roots, and I think that’s one of the most successful aspects of this genre: while the quotidian is important, it doesn’t rule. There’s always a whiff of another layer to life. This happens in my currently favorite magical realist book, Andres Neuman’s Traveler of the Century. Where are we in Neuman’s world? We’re told it’s sometime in the 19th Century, somewhere between Saxony and Prussia, but in many respects the action could also could be happening today. It’s a philosophically and emotionally rich narrative that explores multiple layers of experience. 

3. Why do you write magic realism?

The shape shifting that often happens in such novels seems psychologically true to me. For example, in my soon-to-be published novel Fling!, when my grandmother’s ashes resurrect and she appears after being dead for 70 years, it couldn’t be true literally. Though most Christians would disagree, and perhaps those who believe in reincarnation, the dead don’t come back to life. However, the dead are constantly appearing in our dreams, in our thoughts, in our inherited behavior. So while the thing being described may not exist in our physical sense of reality, it does when it’s viewed as a metaphor. It’s as if people can return from the dead. I also like to write magical realism because it allows my imagination to explore images and ideas that aren’t confined to everyday life. While I love most everything about our commonplace world, I also have a strong sense that other realities exist simultaneously. This genre helps me to investigate that possibility.

4. Can you give us your definition of magic realism? 

I’ve probably already partially covered my definition in my previous responses, but I’ll try to embellish. My view of the world is pantheistic. Everything seems alive with what some people might call the divine, though I find that term too limiting. I think magic actually comes closer to what I mean in the sense that as children, we view the world as an enchanted place. In most developed countries, especially, we are taught to dismiss such beliefs and become more realistic as adults. I’ll give a personal example. I grew up in Calgary where the winters were very cold. One of the beauties of that weather, though, was that Jack Frost visited and left amazing designs on the windows. But when I was five, my Scottish schoolmaster grandpa told me there was no such thing as Jack Frost (or Santa Claus). Of course, I didn’t believe him. I still don’t! But I think magical realism retains elements of this enchantment with our world and those who write it are trying to recapture for their readers that dimension. It’s a way of viewing life through a different lens than what realism offers. Different rules exist, allowing the writer to break out of realism’s limitations.  

5. Tell us about your latest magic realist book?

With my Scottish background on my mother’s side, I grew up hearing her talk about the Scots having a sixth sense and was accustomed to the idea that surreal things can happen. She came out of a Celtic tradition where people believe there are certain times of year when the strict boundaries between the living and dead become less firm. The Celtic New Year, November 1, is one of those periods and is also known as All Soul’s Day, our American version being Halloween. I mention this because in my novel Fling!, to be published in July, 90 year-old Bubbles and her daughter Feather’s long-dead ancestors appear. Alternating narratives weave together Bubbles and Feather’s odyssey with their colorful ancestors, creating a family tapestry. The “now” thread presents the two women as they travel south from Canada to San Francisco and then Mexico, covering a span of about six months. “Now” and “then” merge in Mexico when Bubbles’ mother, grandmother, and grandfather turn up, enlivening the narrative with their antics. In Mexico, the land where reality and magic co-exist, Feather gets a new sense of her mother. The Indian villagers mistake Bubbles for a well-known rain goddess, praying for her to bring rain so their land will thrive again. Feather, who’s been seeking “The Goddess” for years, eventually realizes what she’s overlooked.

Thank you, Lily, for a fascinating interview. 

You can find Lily's blog here: https://lilyionamackenzie.wordpress.com/