#magical realism
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Four and a half stars. This was so moving and beautiful. I read a few reviews that complained the protagonist and narrator, Tally, was too hard to empathize with because she’s so analytical, but I never felt even a hint of that. I loved the whole story. (Also, the cover is gorgeous.)
Even readers who don’t know a thing about astronomy (like myself) or Greek myths (not like myself) will be able to follow the story. It’ll be difficult to see where the plot is going, but seriously, just trust the author because she’ll get you through it in one piece.
Overall: this is an excellent read that hit all my happy buttons–friendship, growing up, stumbling around and trying to figure out Emotions while being utterly mortified by them, Greek myths, weird small towns where mystical things start to happen, and an utter lack of angst over the main character’s bisexuality. I received my copy for free at Y'All West (May 2016), but having finished the book, I would say it is absolutely worth whatever you have to pay to get your hands on a copy.
t.w. harassment, politics
“Priscilla,” I shout, and my shout travels down the winding, echoing halls. No answer. I make a mental note to fire her the next time I see her. Or possibly put a hand on her ass or, if I have the time, objectify or assault her in a more creative way, something inspirationally degrading, something that befits a U.S Congressman.
“Goddammit,” I mutter, picking myself up off the floor. It’s shiny and slick and white, hard, and I feel bruised as if I fell here. I don’t remember falling. “The fuck is this shit, Priscilla? Priscilla, where am I?”
My secretary still doesn’t answer. For the first time in a year, she’s not here.
“Siri?” I ask. “Alexa?” My hands started patting my perfectly tailored suit pockets frantically. I still have my flag pin. Thank god for small mercies. If the constituents saw me without that… But where is my phone?
“Alexa?” I holler, starting to breathe heavily. I pause, count to ten like my wife’s therapist told me. (She really is my wife’s therapist. I saw her one time, goddammit. I don’t need a therapist. My mind is strong. My mind is fucking jacked, like Chuck Norris, or Hulk Hogan, or someone else equally muscled and mentally fearless.) But Alexa isn’t answering, and counting to ten isn’t working.
“ALEXAAAAA!!!!” I scream, starting to stumble down the long, smooth white hallway. “JEFF BEZOS!!!!”
No Priscilla, no Siri, no Alexa. I’m alone with my thoughts. It is silent like a grave. Like my grave.
Oh fuck, don’t think like that. You are fearless, you are powerful, you are a badass. You are the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. You have seen battle, and three different filibusters.
“Somebody, anybody, just tell me where I am!” I shout into the still, quiet air. As I stumble forward, the path splits into three. I turn right, and then right again. A dead end. I stumble back.
“What is this, some kind of maze?” I ask. I’m scared and hungry. I search my pockets for some kind of food, and grab something pleasantly squishy. A tide pod? I put it back in my pocket for later. “Whoever did this, I’ll have you up on treason! Let me out!”
Still nothing.
“Where am–SHIT FUCKING FUCKER!” I trip on something, crash to the floor. Scrambling behind me, I grab a book. A book? It’s weird, musty. I haven’t smelled a book since Jeff replaced all the books in my house with individual kindles in return for that little favor with the whipped cream and the midnight vote. This book seems old and moldy, and the pages are weird and–
“Ugh, it’s skin!” I shout. I throw the book away from me. I realize how middle class I just sounded, and murmur more calmly, “Aha, what well-preserved vellum.” One never knows when the voters are listening, after all. I pull the book back again hesitantly.
In looping, dark maroon letters it says The Ivory Labyrinth. In smaller writing underneath, it says Written In 1156.
The ivory…all the smooth white stone lining everything I see, it’s not stone at all. And it’s not a maze, it’s a labyrinth. I just put things together in a way that resembles intelligence. I feel kind of proud of myself.
The first page only says Pay for your crimes, Congressman. I’m surprised for a second. Did they have congressmen in the 12th century? I suppose so. We are a noble lineage. I try to remember when America was founded. I know it was in July. Can’t remember the rest.
Or maybe it means me specifically? Was it written just for me?
Pay for my crimes. I don’t like it. Sounds ominous, but I’m probably overreacting. I count to ten again like Myrtle taught me.
But it couldn’t be me. I’m 99% sure I was born in the 20th century. The 1% is vaguely concerning. I should be more sure. But I definitely wasn’t around in 1156. I wasn’t even elected until 1984!
I walk forward, leaving the book behind, drawn by something, and slowly, I lose myself in the endless white. Step after step, the smooth walls curve away from me, twisting and swirling until I lose all direction.
What does it all mean? Why me?
I’m parched, and I fall to my knees. “Water,” I croak. For Elephants, my head supplies. Am I delirious?
“No,” I gasp, “It can’t be.” I subside into silence, and then, “The elephants,” I murmur hopelessly. “The ivory trade.”
I pull myself up. “It wasn’t my idea!” I shout. My shout echoes emptily along the ivory veins. “I’m sorry I told Trump to lift the ban on ivory trading! You’re overreacting! It was just a deal between friends! The elephants were fucked already, and somebody had to benefit!”
There is no noise, only the endless silence of my ivory prison. Somehow, I knew the elephants would have their revenge. Somehow, wasting away in the ivory labyrinth feels fated.
Am I insane?
Does it matter?
I won’t escape here in time for midterms, I realize.
Nothing matters at all.
FIN
Yeah idk what happened here either, but sometimes inspiration strikes and brings you to weird places. Credit to the creators of Magical Realism Bot
A giveaway for Saturnalia!
Saturnalia was the Ancient Roman mid-December festival of feasting, gift-giving, and wild partying, when ordinary Romans turned social norms upside down and revelled in pandemonium.
Saturnalia features in Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs, my novella of magic, makeup, crypts, and clownfish. I have three signed copies to give away this December, to lend a little pandemonium to your mid-winter festivities.
Enter on Goodreads.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón
6 July 1907-13 July 1954 (aged 47)
Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
Periods: Naive art, Modern art, Surrealism, Magical realism, Symbolism, Primitivism, Naturalism, Social realism, Cubism
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portrait and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country popular culture, she employed a naive folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting about her experience chronic pain.
Ironopolis by Glen James Brown: Book Review
Ironopolis by Glen James Brown: Book Review
It’s grim up north … actually it’s not entirely. There is a lot of beauty in the north but as Glen James Brown’s debut novel illustrates there is a bleakness to that beauty – the north has a shadow self and certain areas dwell in the shade that casts. Places such as the Burn Estate, the central location of Ironopolis.This is not a new book. It first hit the shelves in 2018, so it isn’t an old…
Jeppe Madsen Ohlsen (May 18, 1891 - 1948) was a largely autodidact Danish painter (he did study in Norway with Christian Krohg).
He painted strange scenes from his hometown Christiansfeld which had an unusual religious community of Moravian Brothers (Herrnhut Brethren) in a style that mixed Naivism, Symbolism and Magcal Realism.
Above:Den Månesyge, 1940 - oil on canvas (Kunstmuseet Brundlund Slot)
Magical Realism:“A primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements… [Characterized by the use of] magic or the supernatural in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting.”
For the lovely anon who asked for book recommendations <3 All descriptions taken from Goodreads. Please note that some of these books may contain mature topics or content. Reader discretion is advised.
An asterisk (*) denotes one of my all-time favorite books!
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.
Plain Kate(*) by Erin Bow (Note: This is more fantasy rather than magical realism, but I don’t have enough fantasy favorites to make a separate list so…)
Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver’s daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden charms are so fine that some even call her “witch-blade” – a dangerous nickname in a town where witches are hunted and burned in the square.
Kafka on the Shore (*) by Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura […] and an aging simpleton called Nakata […]. As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder.
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(*) by Leslye Walton
Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.
The Ocean at the End of the Laneby Neil Gaiman
A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. […] [He] is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. […] [As] he sits by the pond […], the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. […] Two outsiders venture here: a fallen priest, and the Lady, an investigator who searches for buried information from prisoners’ pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, honour and corruption-ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own.
The Little Prince (*) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (It could be arguable if this is magical realism or not… but I like it too much to not put it on this list, haha.)
[The Little Prince] tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.
“Did your wish come true?” //“I am not entirely certain yet.”//“You shall have to let me know,” Celia says. “I hope it does. I suppose in a way, I made the Wishing Tree for you.”
“I made a wish on this tree years ago,” Marco says // “What did you wish for?” Bailey asks, hoping it is not too forward a question // “I wished for her,” he says.
WILL I EVER RECOVER FROM THIS *SCREAMS*
Into the mountains with stars in my eyes;
Into the woods where forbidden truths lie.
“The Chosen One”, 4x8 colored pencil on mat board.
BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE CHAPTER 28: ANGELS ARE NOT INHERENTLY GOOD
art by @beechichi, who i really can’t thank enough
taking q&a questions i’ll answer on saturday!
i really don’t know what to put here, y’all. i’ll make a thank-you post later, with sentimentality and credits and feelings, but for now, just enjoy the last chapter. thanks for coming with the characters on this journey with me.
PLEASE READ BBAC IT IS SO GOOD I DON’T KNOW HOW TO CONVINCE YOU GUYS ANY MORE THAN THIS.
Post link
More in my magical romcom universe; morning coffee on a rainy day. The ghost that likes to haunt her kitchen is mostly docile as long as Claire gives them thier own mug to rattle.
Pretending you don’t see anything is a solid transit survival plan whether you’re dealing with a man eating a whole lemon or the supernatural.
