The Great Unexpected

Magical Realism is a literary genre in which mystical, apparently supernatural, or fanciful events are presented in a realistic tone, as though they are essentially typical or even mundane. The characters and their lives are depicted realistically as a mixture of the good and the bad, though their stories can include anything that might be considered “magic” or outside the realm of normal life. Naomi, for example, experiences significant loss and serious traumas, especially surrounding the deaths of her father and her guardian, Joe. She feels tremendous jealousy, anxiety, and even fear, and she isn’t depicted as an unrealistically innocent child, for example, who is ignorant of the challenges life poses. She is near the age of 12, a complex age for any child, and her experiences and feelings are portrayed as such. It is the same with her friend, Lizzie, who manages her tragedies in a somewhat healthier way, though the contrast between the way the girls process grief is also quite realistic.

The magical elements in a work of Magical Realism serve several important functions, according to Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most prolific authors in the genre, because different cultures define what is “real” in distinct ways. According to Márquez, “It is here that magical realism serves its most important function, because it facilitates the inclusion of alternative belief systems” (Parkinson Zamora, Lois. “Magical Realism in a Nutshell.” Oprah). Naomi has been taught that there is reality and there are stories and that these two are not and cannot be the same things. Despite the fact that some of this training, so to speak, doesn’t sit well with her—she continues to believe that witches can affect the weather and that Joe is still nearby even after he dies, for example—she accepts the idea that there are no such things as evil spirits and that some stories are only stories. When she arrives in Ireland—a place where myths and legends are treated more like history, children are warned to avoid fairy rings, and bridges are built to help travelers escape evil spirits—what she has been taught about what is real no longer seems to hold true at all, prompting Naomi and Lizzie to question the nature of reality. A dead boy’s spirit walks around like the living, and disturbing a fairy ring leads to tragedy. The competing notions of what is real, between America and Ireland, mirror, in many ways, the competing notions of what is real or important between childhood and adulthood, juxtaposing the two cultures and representing the tension inherent to the process of growing up.