Just Say Fantasy
It's the end of Hispanic Heritage Month in the states and I have a confession to make.
I am a Latin American woman and I don't like magical realism. It doesn't sound like a scandalous thing to say, but after reading my fair share of Marquez, Borges, Ortega y Gasset, etc. (in the original Spanish) I can soundly say I don't care for it. I also say this knowing how important a genre it has become for the Latino community. I can only speak for myself, but it's not uncommon for Latinos to believe in Catholicism and Paganism at the same time. We've been known to pray to God and also light candles to ancestors to intercede in daily affairs. We can hang a cross at one end of the house and a horseshoe at the other both to ward away the evil eye and negative spirits. Magical realism is a part of our lives.
So I don't mind the idea of magical realism. It's the "literarification" (an invention, I know) of it. I feel about it the same way I feel about Hawthorne. It's overblown and too descriptive with tragedy on every page. But that's not the worst of it. It's a pig with lipstick. Let me explain.
As I'm sure most readers of this blog know, I read fairy tales. I don't just read them for pleasure, but also to understand whether they still speak to a modern mind. For all intents and purposes, magical realism is just long form fairy tales. If you don't know, magical realism is when the fantastical is treated as normal in everyday life. What could be more in keeping with that genre than stories which include fairy godmothers arriving to help scullery maids attend royal balls or planting seeds from a stranger that become portals to a world of giants? And yet, magical realism goes on for pages and pages doing what folklorist can accomplish in 1,000 words or less.
Don't get me wrong. I don't object to length. I like weighty tomes with tons of world-building and fantasy settings. My problem is magical realists, literary magical realists, write what could be interesting fantasy stories, but because the idea of genre fiction is somehow less than worthy choose to add pretension.
That is not to say some people haven't done it well, usually with a lighter touch. These tend to be tagged as rom-coms or cozy fantasy. Or sometimes they work better as movies, such as Like Water for Chocolate, Amelie and Big. There are times I wish I liked it more--it seems like the perfect fit on paper--but being a reader who actually enjoyed the Shakespeare unit and F. Scott Fitzgerald among other literary classics, I've yet to find the literary magical realism book that didn't feel like work.
Maybe I haven't found the recommendation. Any to suggest?