Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
Though I’ve never heard him described as such, I also consider Coupland a magical-realist. Mostly he is known as the darling writer of Gen-X, whatever that may be. Coupland does have a knack for creating wholly believable modern characters. Parents and elders are not omnipotent. They are as lost, confused, poor and as uncertain as their children. His characters have lousy jobs, mediocre relationships, unpleasant but common maladies and dull, trivial lives. However, like a good magical-realist writer, the out-of-the-ordinary intrudes with events and people that don’t fit any category. They change the outlook and lives, not only of the main characters, but of everyone surrounding them. In Eleanor Rigby, Liz Dunn, a...
The Ice Queen
Alice Hoffman
Hoffman is herself a queen – of magical realism. While spinning her story, she dabbles a toe her in there in pools of the fantastic. You barely notice the ripples here and there, until suddenly the most fantastic things seem totally believable. Sure, I can believe the woodman cut off his leg and had it replaced with tin. Sure, I can believe he cut off his other limbs and had them replaced with tin too. So why not his head also? And suddenly a tin woodman seems rational.
The Ice Queen is by far one of Hoffman’s best in recent years (though I did really like The River King). Her story is of a woman who made a horrible wish as a child and had it come true. She become frozen in her own little world until a cataclysmic event shocks her...