I’m chronically ill. Whether I’m swept up, terrified, swooning, or trying to solve a mystery, I love my fiction to take me elsewhere. The dichotomy of wanting to share my experiences, discuss disability, open up the conversation around the topic, and have others lose themselves in story has been a fine line I’ve walked with all of my work. With Joyce, I wanted to bring grief and disability to life in a more resonate way. The words pain and fatigue mean drastically different things to different people. When magic is involved, it transcends your definition or mine, allowing us to focus on the experience with less personal context.
Like some other powerhouse books I’ve read, it would take hours to fully discuss the brilliant storytelling, the compelling characters, the descriptions that have you smelling the damp earth, and to truly explain the awe I felt when reading this book.
When I say, “I’ve never read anything like this,” I usually mean that wowed me this much or that one aspect was unique or clingy. In this case, I mean it in every sense. It was chewy and raw and rare, unique and visceral, sumptuous and dark, devastating and lyrical.
Dealing with illness in magical realism is something I’m familiar with, clearly. To see it being handled in the way Sue Rainsford does is spine-tingling and refreshing, if one can call a book so guttural as this one such.
'A tangled, gnarled, wonderfully original, strange, beautiful beast of a book' DAISY JOHNSON, author of Everything Under
'Beautiful and terrifying' SUNDAY TIMES
'Seethingly assured debut fuses magical realism with critical and feminist theory' GUARDIAN
In house in a wood, Ada and her father live peacefully, tending to their garden and the wildlife in it. They are not human though. Ada was made by her father from the Ground, a unique patch of earth with birthing and healing properties. Though perhaps he didn't get her quite right. They spend their days healing the local human folk - named Cures - who…
Truly magical realism at its finest, Carlos Ruiz Zafón weaves a sweeping story into the most breathtaking setting.
I’ve not read anything like Shadow of the Wind. I was so immersed that my review in 2016, the minute after I read it for the first time, I wrote that I was a ten-year-old boy discovering books for the first time.
I fell in love and grew up and solved a mystery. I experienced it, not just read it. I got lost in the pages and came out gasping, having just been through so much. It was a gift that you should give yourself too.
"The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero." -Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)
"One gorgeous read." -Stephen King
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been…
The Dog Boy by Noel Anenberg is a historical novel set in 1945, following Phosie Mae Eaton, an African-American mother from Texas, as she travels to Los Angeles to care for her son, a heroic Marine wounded during the battle for Iwo Jima.
There is something special about Heather Webber’s work—all of it, mind you. But South of the Buttonwood Tree has something a little extra.
It’ll break your heart on the same page you’re laughing. Her characters become people you’ve known your whole life by the end of the first chapter. By the end of the book, you’re leaving friends and family behind to live their lives without you—that’s how rich the story is.
There is no getting bogged down in details, yet you have them all. The story flows in a rhythm that feels warm and comforting but not so formulaic that you know what to expect when you read the first word. She really hits that comfort spot I know I need, and you might too.
Blue Bishop has a knack for finding lost things. No one is more surprised than Blue, however, when she comes across a newborn baby in the woods, just south of a very special buttonwood tree.
Sarah Grace Landreneau Fulton is at a crossroads. She has always tried so hard to do the right thing, but her own mother would disown her if she ever learned half of Sarah Grace's secrets.
The unexpected discovery of the newborn baby girl will alter Blue's and Sarah Grace's lives forever. Both women will uncover long-held secrets that reveal exactly who they really are -…
Some say this book is horror. I recommend it not as a horror book, but as a glimpse into illness, grief, and uncertainty through the lens of magical realism.
I see the moments along the way that are scary, but for me, those are just jump pads to the action of living, of existing, of the complicated state of being unwell, and how love will allow you to accept more than you thought you were capable of.
Does Julia know she showcased the slow decline of a chronically ill person in the way she did? I do not know. But as a chronically ill person myself, I saw poignant vignettes of tenderness around the topic.
Though the dual storylines, the unknown, the fear, are interesting and creative, it’s the quiet moments between two women who love each other, just wondering what’s next, that will stay with you.
Named as book to look out for in 2022 by Guardian, i-D, Autostraddle, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, Stylist and DAZED.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.
To have the woman she loves back should mean a return…
In May 1941, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, hums with talk of spring flowers, fishing derbies, and the growing war in Europe. And for the residents of a quiet neighborhood boarding house, the winds of change are blowing.
Self-proclaimed spinster, Bessie Blackwell, is the reluctant owner of a new pair of glasses. The…
Have you ever read a book that makes your mouth and eyes water at the same time? That makes you laugh and takes your breath away and pisses you off and has you telling your partner every single detail of it, assuring they’ll never need to read it, but they want to anyhow? That’s Like Water for Chocolate.
The opening scene sets the whole tone of the book, and from then on, it sways between emotional heartbreaker, hilarious romp, devastating family drama, and magical realism that is so brilliant it feels real. What I’m saying is, it’s a delight.
THE INTOXICATING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ABOUT LOVE, COOKING AND MAGIC. PERFECT FOR FANS OF JOANNE HARRIS AND ISABEL ALLENDE.
'This magical, mythical, moving story of love, sacrifice and summering sensuality is something I will savour for a long time' MAUREEN LIPMAN
Like Water For Chocolate tells the captivating story of the De la Garza family. As the youngest daughter, Tita is forbidden by Mexican tradition to marry. Instead, she pours all of her emotions into her delicious recipes, which she shares with readers along the way.When Tita falls in love with Pedro, he is seduced by the magical food she cooks.…
Enveloped in memories and ghosts, my days feel endless, short, repetitive. Time is slippery until Tuesdays—most Tuesdays, anyways. I’ve been called to the cabin to grieve a mother, a body, an ideal love. I’ve escaped for clarity and the deep breath I can’t take anywhere else. As I settle in, the unexpected finds me. It sneaks in through shattering glass and rustling leaves. It’s seen and unseen, felt and heard and known.
Quiet and evocative, Joyce is embodied dark crip magical realism examining life in a haunted body.
The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman
by
Robin Gregory,
After his doting aunt dies, a special fourteen-year-old boy who has trouble fitting into a remote 1906 village goes against a powerful retired Army captain determined to eradicate his outcast kin.
Katy: The Woman Who Signed the Declaration of Independence
by
Betty Bolté,
One woman, Mary Katharine Goddard, signed the Declaration of Independence and risked hanging by doing so.
She was supposed to marry and have children, living the ‘normal’ life of an 18th-century woman. Destiny said otherwise. Instead, at the behest of her impulsive brother, she moved from one colony to another,…
