Family Drama With Magical Realism

I'm down to writing about my last two Cybils YA speculative fiction finalists.

Today, lads and lasses, we will discuss Still Life With Tornado by A.S. King.
This was a particularly intriguing work because it wasn't overtly speculative. It was more of a family drama that had some magical realism here and there.

Sixteen-year-old Sarah is struggling. She's not going to school. She's wandering around the city. What's going on? How much does this have to do with an art project that was destroyed? How much with her brother who is estranged from the family? How much with a family vacation in her past?

What about those sightings she keeps having of herself from her past and future? What's that about?

What Little I Know About Magical Realism

The First Thing I Know About Magical Realism, Though I Don't Know If It's True. While reading this very well-written book, I kept thinking of a conversation I had with a bookseller years ago while I was making an appearance in her store. The poor woman didn't make a sale the entire time I was there. I don't mean that she didn't sell one of my books while I was there. She didn't sell any books while I was there. (There's no bookstore in that town anymore, so I guess she didn't do better on other days.) The two of us spent the afternoon sitting in rocking chairs in the middle of all the books that weren't selling, shooting the breeze. Good times, good times.

The one thing I remember us talking about was magical realism. She said that if some sort of bizarre event in a book is due to a character suffering trauma, than it's not magical realism. A delusion that occurs because someone is under mental duress has an explanation. Magical realism cannot be explained. That's why it's magical.

The bookseller who told me this had once been a therapist, which in my mind gave her opinions a lot of validity. No, I don't know why.

For a long time while reading Still Life With Tornado, I kept wondering if what Sara was seeing--her former self, at first--was explainable because of trauma, duress. Maybe I was reading a family drama, not speculative fiction. But eventually others see the various Saras, which meant that this wasn't going on in Sara's mind, something magical was going on.

The Second Thing I Know About Magical Realism, Though I Don't Know How True It Is. In magical realism, the magical events are simply accepted by the characters. Like the roses growing out of the main character's wrist in When the Moon Was Ours.

Eventually that's what happens in Still Life With Tornado.

Still Life With Tornado, in my humble opinion, should have a lot of attraction for adult readers as well as YA. In part that's due to the family drama. There are also a number of chapters from the mother's point of view. Adult point of view in a YA novel isn't something I see a lot of, so it does add something different to this particular piece of work.

Some Serious Magical Realism

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore is another Cybils YA Speculative Fiction finalist. It's an example of intense magical realism. According to my understanding of this sub-genre of fantasy, fantastical elements are brought into a real world setting and everyone simply accepts them. So no one is amazed when the main character in Moon makes her first appearance spilling out of a water tower, or that she has roses growing out of her wrist.

What I liked best about this book were a couple of nonmagical elements. One involves Sam, the romantic interest for main character Miel. I can't think of a single thing to say about him without risking a spoiler. So I will say nothing. I will write, instead, about the Bonner sisters. Four beautiful siblings who prey romantically on young men. That's creepy. Yeah, I liked them, too.

When the Moon Was Ours is elegantly written with lush language that's carried through the whole work. In addition to being a Cybils finalist, it was on the long list for the 2016 National Book Award. It's also a 2017 Honor Book for the ALA's Stonewall Book Award.

Patrice Kindl

I've been seeing Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl mentioned frequently recently. I kept thinking, I know that name...Patrice Kindl. Sure enough, she is the author of Owl in Love, a book I read back in 2006 as part of a magical realism weekend read I did for the first 48 Hour Book Challenge. This puts Keeping the Castle on my radar.

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”".

A Little Something On Magical Realism

By way of cynsations, I found Jennifer Mattson on Magic Realism at The Spectacle. Mattson talks about what they're calling "magic realism," though I've always heard it referred to as "magical realism." (Picking nits.)

In the Mattson interview we get some definition and examples and discussion of how this genre fits in with kidlit.

Another example of magical realism--Owl in Love by Patrice Kindl.

Magic For Readers

About a month ago, I was roaming in my local library's YA area when I came upon new a volume called Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. Now, this did not look like YA to me, and my longtime readers are probably thinking, Oh, Gail must have had a meltdown right there in the library because she needs everything to be very clearly defined. Well, I thought of it. But then I recalled reading something I think Roger Sutton once wrote about part of a YA librarian's function being bringing the young to adult literature. I like to think that I am teachable, so, okay, I was able to understand and appreciate that philosophy.

And I brought Magic for Beginners home.

Now, Magic for Beginners is a collection of what might be described as weird ass short stories. And I mean that in the best possible way. I will say right up front that they tend to be the kinds of short stories that I finish reading and go, "Ah, what?" There may be an epiphany thing going on here, and I find that with those kinds of stories I often don't share the main character's revelation. Nonetheless, these are endlessly inventive tales. I believe we're also talking nonLatin American magical realism, edged with a tinge of horror. Link is obsessed with zombies, for instance, so much so that by the time I got to the story Some Zombie Contingency Plans I was beginning to think, Yes, perhaps I should have one. One of her stories takes place near Ausible Chasm, which I assume is Ausable Chasm. When I was there, maybe fifteen to twenty years ago, the infrastructure for getting about seemed a little old and creepy. Perhaps there could be zombies down there who come up to go shopping at a local convenience store as Link contends in The Hortlak.

In addition to dealing with the magical in every day situations, Link has a couple of stories in this volume that sort of telescope into themselves. The title story, for instance, appears to be about rabid fans of a television show until you realize they also appear to be living within an episode of that program.

Many of these stories have YA or at least older teen characters, which certainly would make them attractive to younger readers. On top of that, part way through reading this book, I suddenly experienced a flashback to my own teen years. Back then, I went through a Richard Brautigan phase and have held on to the three books I bought then, even though I can't say I ever understood much of what's in them. Brautigan's attraction for me was that his stuff was weird and different, unlike the books I found in my high school library. His work was a tipoff that there were all kinds of strange and marvelous things out there to read, if I could only find them. I got the same thrill yesterday when I was in the UConn Co-op looking at books you don't find stacked on those tables at Barnes & Noble.

Link's work, to me, is far more accessible than Brautigan's, but it gave this reader that same feeling of possibility I remember getting back when I was first exposed to Trout Fishing in America. Magic for Beginners could very well encourage older teen readers to go looking for more of the same.

According to Link's website, she has a YA collection, Pretty Monsters, coming out from Viking.

You can read the first story from Magic for Beginners, The Faery Handbag.

Now I Get It. Maybe.

I was e-mailing BDT about golems today because he's reading the second volume of The Bartimeus Trilogy. (That will be another post). I mentioned Snow in August by Pete Hamill because a golem figures in that book.

Snow in August was published ten years ago. I'm never right on top of things, so I probably read it eight or nine years ago. I remember not caring for it very much, in part because I felt the fantasy ending came out of nowhere. Make up your mind! I thought. Are you a realistic book or a fantasy book?

Today I realized that Snow in August might be an example of magical realism, which I knew little, if anything, about back then. In fact, this magical realism site lists it as an example of magical realism for young adults.

I agree with categorizing it as a book for younger people. At the time I was reading it I kept thinking, If someone had edited out this long, dull part in the middle, this would be a kids' book. And, of course, if I had known anything about magical realism, maybe I wouldn't have found the middle long and dull.

Gee, I thought a lot while I was reading that book.