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kestrell_Some Kind of Fairytale_ (2012) by Graham Joyce
I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore because most of the fantasy books I pick up turn out to feel like the same old story. Of course, most of my favorite books turn out to be the same old stories, so obviously it is not the fact that the story is familiar which is the turn off, so I guess it is still something of a riddle for me why the same old story works some times and not others.
_Some Kind of Fairytale_ is the first fantasy novel I have read in a long time which made me think, "Oh, yes, this story *had* to be told as a fantasy story because it does something only fantasy can do."
The plot: It's Christmas day, and a middle-aged couple hear a knock at their door; when they open the door, a young woman is standing there. She claims to be their daughter who disappeared twenty years before. There is a lot of evidence to indicate that she really is who she claims to be, but she refuses to explain where she has been or what caused her disappearance.
The story has a definite "Turn of the Screw" atmosphere which creates a lot of ambiguity regarding whether or not anything fantastic is actually going on
and, like the young woman's friends and family in the story, the reader will probably judge the returned girl's story according to the reader's own personality and beliefs.
The real power of this story, however, is that it poses the question of how we, individually and as a culture, judge other people's claims of fantastic experiences, , and even pathologize claims of fantastic experiences as a sign of mental illness. How is it that we have a culture in which people have no problem communicating about the most intimate details of their experiences with sex, drugs, and alcohol, but anyone who mentions having a spiritual or religious experience is made to feel like she or he isn't properly dealing with reality?
Perhaps this is what I find frustrating and disappointing about much modern fantasy fiction: it seems to want to rationalize the fantastic through reams of "world-building" detail regarding the protagonist's prettiness, his or her clothing and jewelry, and endless lists of magical consumer goods, but any experience reminiscent of the truly fantastic--the surreality of dreams and daydreams, anything of a spiritual or religious aspect--who believes in that stuff? Fantasy must be manifested through lengthy descriptions of material detail, and so much for creating a sense of the ineffable, so much for evoking even a flickering moment of mystery, a shivery moment of believing in the unbelievable, such as occurs in
"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" chapter of _The Wind in the Willows_
http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/grahame/wind07.htm .
_Some Kind of Fairytale_ summons up a wild wood where mystery occurs, a heroine who has experienced something inexplicable, and a mirror in wich we find reflected our own beliefs regarding the fantastic and the magical.
I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore because most of the fantasy books I pick up turn out to feel like the same old story. Of course, most of my favorite books turn out to be the same old stories, so obviously it is not the fact that the story is familiar which is the turn off, so I guess it is still something of a riddle for me why the same old story works some times and not others.
_Some Kind of Fairytale_ is the first fantasy novel I have read in a long time which made me think, "Oh, yes, this story *had* to be told as a fantasy story because it does something only fantasy can do."
The plot: It's Christmas day, and a middle-aged couple hear a knock at their door; when they open the door, a young woman is standing there. She claims to be their daughter who disappeared twenty years before. There is a lot of evidence to indicate that she really is who she claims to be, but she refuses to explain where she has been or what caused her disappearance.
The story has a definite "Turn of the Screw" atmosphere which creates a lot of ambiguity regarding whether or not anything fantastic is actually going on
and, like the young woman's friends and family in the story, the reader will probably judge the returned girl's story according to the reader's own personality and beliefs.
The real power of this story, however, is that it poses the question of how we, individually and as a culture, judge other people's claims of fantastic experiences, , and even pathologize claims of fantastic experiences as a sign of mental illness. How is it that we have a culture in which people have no problem communicating about the most intimate details of their experiences with sex, drugs, and alcohol, but anyone who mentions having a spiritual or religious experience is made to feel like she or he isn't properly dealing with reality?
Perhaps this is what I find frustrating and disappointing about much modern fantasy fiction: it seems to want to rationalize the fantastic through reams of "world-building" detail regarding the protagonist's prettiness, his or her clothing and jewelry, and endless lists of magical consumer goods, but any experience reminiscent of the truly fantastic--the surreality of dreams and daydreams, anything of a spiritual or religious aspect--who believes in that stuff? Fantasy must be manifested through lengthy descriptions of material detail, and so much for creating a sense of the ineffable, so much for evoking even a flickering moment of mystery, a shivery moment of believing in the unbelievable, such as occurs in
"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" chapter of _The Wind in the Willows_
http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/grahame/wind07.htm .
_Some Kind of Fairytale_ summons up a wild wood where mystery occurs, a heroine who has experienced something inexplicable, and a mirror in wich we find reflected our own beliefs regarding the fantastic and the magical.
