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Magical Realism
Magical Realism is hot: It’s the label attached to last year’s Printz winner Bone Gap, and it’s been popping up all over the YA and MG scene for the past few years. This year, again, offers us a handful of books in the genre. I’ve read three so far that deserve to be in the awards speculation pool, and today I’m going to talk about two of them (the last one is a late fall pub so we’ll wait on that).
Magical Realism is realistic literature with fantastical or magical elements, but it’s something more, because that bare bones definition also covers a significant chunk of fantasy. If you extend the definition, two additional points are worth noting: first, the setting; and second, the way the magic is received. The top-billed magical realists are Latin American — Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel, Isabel Allende — and their settings are Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Chile. And in their books, the magic is not something apart — compare this to, say, Stiefvater’s Raven Boys quartet, where they all know the magic is strange, and, well, magical. Instead, in magical realist texts, the magic heightens the mundane and becomes an expression of emotion, rather than something characters step back and try to understand.
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One of the two titles I’m discussing today reads to me like classic magical realism — no surprise, as it bears a dedication to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and is a Brazilian work, originally published in Portuguese and now translated into English. The second straddles the fantasy/magical realism line, but feels closer in its roots to magical realism than fantasy, so I’m going with the label.
Alright, enough introduction, and on to the books.
The Head of the Saint, Socorro Acioli, translated by Daniel Hahn
Delacorte Press, March 2016
Reviewed from ARC
I had a plan, formed after reading The Head of the Saint: I would read all the translated YA and write a fantastic roundup.
Only, do you know, it turns out very few works of translated YA fiction exist?
This is a shame and, honestly, an outrage. Literature transports us. It educates us. It creates empathy and understanding. But the USA is all me, me, me; we’re the ones who need to pretend to be from another country when we travel if we don’t want dirty looks and unkind assumptions. If we want to understand the world, if we want to step outside our bubbles of cultural assumptions and missteps, we need books from other places and utterly unfamiliar worlds, not just the USA-Britain-Australia triumvirate of voices, and not just books by American authors set in other places. All of those have value, but they aren’t the whole picture. Our teen readers deserve literature that brings them the whole picture.
This is the only work in translation I’ve seen this year that looks like it’s even remotely in the running for year-end recognition — and remote might be the keyword, with only two starred reviews and a wide gulf to bridge because of all the ways a translated work is playing against expectations and understandings of literature, which tend to be very culturally driven.
In a nutshell, this is the story of orphaned Samuel, who travels an immense distance to find his unknown father’s mother, and instead discovers a dying town, a headless saint, and a propensity for making connections.
There’s something earthy about this text — there’s a sort of rawness and lack of pretension. Characters are motivated by the simplest of appetites — love, revenge, fame, fear — but then Acioli turns that simplicity into an incredibly textured read. The writing itself is frequently lovely, and I have no doubt that effort went into both the Portuguese and the translation to get the rhythms of speech, the patterns of the stories woven throughout, the grace notes of humor — but it doesn’t read like a text that was labored over; it’s easy to see why Acioli is an award winner in Brazil, and why Hahn is know for his translation work.
More than anything, this is a quick, funny, heart-breaking work. The humor is generally sly, delivered in such a deadpan way that it takes a moment for the penny to drop. The narrative voice helps with this; there’s a shifting perspective third person, highlighting and obscuring moments, bouncing the reader around this small town.
Themes of love and forgiveness, of anger and loss, and the meaning of evil, all echo throughout. It’s also the story of a boy in search of a place, and a place in search of a heart, and what happens when they collide, with a dose of religious magic. The religious aspect might be the most unusual for the average US reader; there’s a degree of faith and a cultural acceptance of faith — the saints are everywhere, the first people the reader sees Samuel encounter are pilgrims, a saint’s statue has the power to make or break a town — that made it clear to me that I was reading something set someplace else. But the text isn’t telling me that, it’s just bringing a place to life and demonstrating the way that religion is a heartbeat for this community, even for the nonbeliever like Samuel.
(Did I mention that we need more works in translation, showing us lives lived elsewhere, rather than US-written, filtered-view books that seek to tell us about those lives?)
Everything about this was unexpected and delightful, even the unpleasant parts — and there are those. But the final impression was of a comedy and a love story (well, several): Samuel starts out angry and embittered, yes, and in terrible circumstances, but the moment Francisco enters, pants down with his dirty magazines, the tone shifts. Madeinusa’s prayer, the first one the reader hears, cements that this is a story of absurdity and wicked humor — she has the saint tied up under her bed, after all. The cast of characters is similarly absurd, but also believable: these are fully fleshed people, with motivations that are often unlovely, with secret desires and years of connections webbing them all together. Samuel, who is both of Candeia and utterly apart, is the perfect lever to set everything into motion, but it’s the miracle, the magic, that is needed for both he and the plot.
This is easy to see as a Batchelder candidate, but I fear it will be harder to see as a Printz candidate. There is, again, so much here that was unfamiliar, and it’s hard to imagine the state-side audience for this one. That said, I’d love to see this gem get the recognition and readership it deserves, because while it’s quieter than my other favorites this year it definitely ranks in the top five, and I know the RealCommittee reads closely enough to push through the challenges posed specifically by translated texts.
A Fierce and Subtle Poison, Samantha Mabry
Algonquin Young Readers, April 2016
Reviewed from ARC
Another book set to the south, this time Puerto Rico, and laced with magic and mystery. Blurbs for this one include Nova Ren Suma (pretty much the perfect readalike author) and Laura Ruby, making it clear who the audience is — and it’s an ever-growing audience, looking for magical realism set someplace bit more familiar than, say, the Brazilian countryside. Mabry balances her setting — and her own outsiderness — adeptly, by making her main character himself an outsider longing to fit in.
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Lucas is the summer gringo — an American boy (even if his mother was originally from the Dominican Republic) with blond hair who wants to belong to Old San Juan, where he spends his summers while his developer father tries to exploit the surrounding countryside. Lucas, the narrator, understands that he can’t really belong to the world he prefers, but he tries anyway, immersing himself in local relationships and local stories, and that’s where Mabry brings the magic into play.
Interestingly, the magic here is scientific magic; everything magical has an explanation in the text, which betrays some of the base rules for magical realism, but the setting and the way the magic shapes so much of the experiences of those around it makes the overall feel in keeping with the literary genre.
This is a sensual read, befitting the murder-mystery plot. The green plants in the house at the end of the street have a palpable presence. Sand sticks to feet, hair drips water, heat and color and smell are all present. Plot wise, the mystery works, albeit imperfectly; the more compelling story is the interaction between Lucas and Isabel. His constant need to figure out who he is, to be a savior (his last name is Knight, in a bit of unsubtle imagery) collides with Isabel’s unbearable loneliness, her own sense of unbelonging, and her need to take control of her own fate. They are perfect matches, but the things they have in common doom them even without the small issue of poison skin.
I’m hoping this, maybe more than any other debut I’ve read, makes the Morris finalist pool. But as much as I enjoyed this, I don’t think it quite goes the distance for Printz. The occasional in-your-face imagery like Lucas’s last name, some clunky dialogue, and the decision to make the magic one more aspect of an actual mystery, explicable and not actually magic all, combine to make this an astounding debut that doesn’t quite line up with the year’s best. (Also I might be alone in my opinion on this one — only one star, and between the ARC and the final copy the cover was redone to pitch this much more commercially.)
Both of these are under the radar reads, so I might be talking to myself, but hopefully you’ll give them a look if you haven’t yet.
Filed under: Books to look for, Contenders, Fiction
About Karyn Silverman
Karyn Silverman is the High School Librarian and Educational Technology Department Chair at LREI, Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School (say that ten times fast!). Karyn has served on YALSA’s Quick Picks and Best Books committees and was a member of the 2009 Printz committee. She has reviewed for Kirkus and School Library Journal. She has a lot of opinions about almost everything, as long as all the things are books. Said opinions do not reflect the attitudes or opinions of SLJ, LREI, YALSA or any other institutions with which she is affiliated. Find her on Twitter @InfoWitch or e-mail her at karynsilverman at gmail dot com.
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