Wednesday, July 08, 2009

A Little Talk About Magical Realism

The Spectacle had a post on magical realism back in February. I have read articles on magical realism that stated that it pertains only to works by Latin American authors like those agent Jennifer Matson mentions. However, I think of it just as she does--books "in which magical elements intrude, almost matter-of-factly, into a basically realistic setup, informing the novel’s various elements in a natural way rather than totally redirecting them. I also think of the magic as being very gentle and often surreal – nothing “high fantasy”".

2 comments:

Camille said...

Thank you for this link. "Magical Realism" is one of those terms that has crossed my path about a dozen times in the last few weeks for a number of odd and disparate reasons. I have really not had any idea what it meant.

Gail Gauthier said...

During the first 48 Hour Book Challenge, I read books that had been suggested to me by members of one of my listservs as examples of magical realism in kidlit. And they fit the description given in The Spectacle post.

By the way, at our house when something new keeps turning up--the way the term "magical realism" did for you recently--we assume that some kind of magical realism thing is at work.