The Enchantment Emporium is set in a new universe, just a bit removed from our own (or maybe it IS our own) where there’s a family of powerful women, surnamed Gale, who nudge the universe around by immense personal ability. Alysha Catherine Gale (Allie), our heroine, is twenty-four, jobless, and single when her grandmother (the family’s black sheep) gives her a store to run — the eponymous Enchantment Emporium. However, that means moving away from the family, out to Calgary. Obviously they can come visit, but apparently everyone is too busy actually to come with her. And then the strange things start happening — a tabloid reporter (very attractive, by the way) comes by, dragons start flying over the store, and faerie beings start showing up. What has Gran gotten Allie into?

The print on this book is different from most of the previous Tanya Huff books I’ve read — it’s finer and situated differently. I don’t know why this caused me to go into the book with a bit of trepidation, but it did. I wasn’t expecting it to be, well, so precisely Tanya Huff, but fortunately, it was. The magic structure reminded me a bit of the Keeper books, what with Aunts and Cousins all over the place, but other than similar terminology (and ontology), it was (I believe) distinct. Here we have a single family, albeit incredibly extensive (everyone seems to have tons of siblings) that, well, tends to intermarry (although the aunts make sure that they’re second cousins or more) and keep the same surname. In the Keeper books, none of that was necessarily true — I think there were many different families.

Once we get past the family and its first wacky set of family members, we get to Calgary and its wacky set of inhabitants. There’s a leprechaun (a bit tall for one, really), a few Faeries (one who lives in the river), some incredibly attractive and incredibly dangerous dragons, a wizard or two (all wizards are evil, by the way), and a tabloid reporter. Believe me when I say that the tabloid reporter isn’t quite the most normal member of the batch. Tanya Huff has always been good at creating believable but
entirely unbelievable characters, if that makes any sense. Perhaps it’s more that I wish I lived in a world where the Aunties exist, where ritual magic can change the world, and where there are shapeshifting dragons who may or may not eat people.

Overall, the book is definitely going to appeal to fans of Tanya Huff’s work, and probably fans of other funny urban/contemporary fantasy authors. Those who like, obviously, strong characters and exciting magical showdowns will like this; those who are really invested in complicated mystery plots probably will figure out what’s happening well before the end, but the ride is great. The ending is somewhat deus ex machina-esque — okay, very deus ex machina-esque — but it’s forgivable, given the circumstances that precede it. I’m looking forward to see if Ms. Huff ever writes more in this world, although the volume
definitely stands alone. 4/5 stars.

Lucy Scarborough is a normal twenty-first-century girl, living in Massachusetts. Well, a normal girl with a crazy mother who is a bag lady in town, but she’s got a wonderful set of foster parents, Soledad and Leo Markowitz, some good friends, and a date to the junior/senior prom coming up shortly. Until an unfortunate event occurs at the prom, she turns up pregnant, and she finds her mother’s diary. In the diary, she finds out that all of the women in her family, as far back as anyone can remember, are under a curse; they all become pregnant at seventeen and when they give birth at eighteen, if they haven’t completed three impossible tasks (as detailed in a variant of “Scarborough Faire”), they go crazy. Fortunately, she has help, but not much time. Can she accomplish these things and stay sane?

Apparently Ms. Werlin realized at some point that the so-called ‘impossible’ tasks in the ballad “Scarborough Faire” (most know the Simon & Garfunkel version, but it predates them by a few hundred years) were made less impossible by modern technology, but that doesn’t mean that they’re exactly easy. However, it provided the basis for the book, and a decidedly interesting retelling of a ballad that, well, generally isn’t retold. I generally like ballad tales — see this for my favorite example — and Ms. Werlin makes a story that absolutely retains the human, personal element, while still keeping the historical and universal context of a song that has remained in the popular knowledge for so long.

I find it necessary to warn readers that the aforementioned “unfortunate event” is rape. Although it’s described in less-than-detailed terms, Ms. Werlin leaves absolutely no room for interpretation otherwise (as well she shouldn’t) and readers who are sensitive to such subjects should consider themselves forewarned. I didn’t know it was coming, and it was a bit of a shock. The aftermath is surprisingly believable, as is Lucy’s nearly supernatural determination to continue the pregnancy, once she knows it’s happening. Her foster mother, Soledad, is a midwife, so they both know what’s coming, and they know that life will be difficult.

Lucy’s life is made simultaneously easier and more complicated by the presence of Zach Greenfield, a longtime neighbor who is staying with the Markowitzes for the summer. Easier, of course, because he is just a couple years older than Lucy and has volunteered to stay around and help her with the tasks, as well as providing emotional support, but more complicated, being that there is an emotional connection and emerging relationship. Lucy and Zach’s struggle with this, especially in the aftermath of her rape, is somewhat condensed, but read as convincing to me, based on their history. Of course, the ballad and the story are about true love, so it is necessary for Lucy to have a real love interest, but I liked Zach on his own merits.

Overall, it’s definitely a book for somewhat older readers (probably age 14 or 15 and older), but even adults will find the story warm and the characters interesting. There’s a strong theme on families — what makes one, and that the family you choose (or who chooses you) is just as much yours as the one you’re born into. The good guys are obviously good and the bad guys obviously bad, and the end is satisfying. Those who like romantic tales will certainly be satisfied, and the preternatural/fantastic elements should be enough for urban/contemporary-set fantasy readers. 4.5/5 stars.

Paula is Jena’s younger sister, the scholarly, studious one. She has been helping her father with many of his business matters, and dreams of starting her own rare-book collection. When he mentions that he is going to travel to wherever-it-is, Paula immediately clamors to go along — and is allowed. For in the city, there is a woman named Irene who has her own scholarly haven for women, and Paula would like to study there. They get to town, hire a bodyguard for Paula, and she begins her studies — but something is strange about the piece they have come to town to buy, called Cybele’s Gift. Many people are after it, and things are starting to happen — attacks, sudden withdrawals from the bidding, and the involvement of strange individuals including a pirate . . .

Our setting, for this volume of the story, is Istanbul, and we are still in the eighteenth century, as far as I could tell. It’s a great time and place to set a book; many things are all converging between the Eastern and Western worlds in that area at that time. The history of the Ottoman Empire is so rich, and Ms. Marillier didn’t even mine a significant percent of it. She didn’t need to — she set out to write a story about a merchant, his daughter, and an exotic, possibly magical piece, and wove in realistic details without overencumbering the story with the entire weight of Turkish civilization. However, Ms. Marillier included excellent details about being a woman at that time in that city, and I found them captivating.

The plot isn’t thoroughly novel; it’s sort of a puzzle story mixed with a love triangle wrapped up in some goddess lore. While it draws on many sources, though, it manages to take all the elements and mix them togehter into something that’s entirely its own. The puzzle story had enough detail to keep me interested (another example of a common puzzle story would be anything by Dan Brown), although not enough that I had figured everything out by the end. The love story was enchanting, and the goddess lore read as quite logical to me. While she isn’t that well-known, Cybele is actually a Phrygian earth/mother goddess sort who was worshipped in the Mediterranean in the past.

I liked Paula, a lot, but I’ve always liked truly brainy, bookish female characters. (What? I identify with them? No, really?) I’m sort of disappointed to realize that even if Ms. Mariller writes another book featuring this family, it will not be focused on Paula herself. Her swains — the pirate and the bodyguard — are also both interesting in their own ways. Paula’s father is much more interesting in this volume than in Wildwood Dancing, but that is most likely because he’s actually on stage for a larger percentage of the book. Irene, the Greek scholar, has quite a few secrets, and managed to retain my interest because of them.

This book has, as I’ve detailed above, a wonderfully exotic setting, a fascinating twist on a common plot, a great love story, interesting characters, and a satisfying resolution. In other words, I loved it, and I have no hesitation in giving it 5/5 stars.

Sophie Katz (also half Eastern-European Jewish and half African American) is at an open house one day when she runs into her ex-husband, a realtor. He tells her of a dream house, a three-bedroom Victorian being sold for well under market value, and she reluctantly agrees to meet him there. Turns out there’s a catch: When they get there, the owner is found dead of a heart attack. The owner’s son still seems likely to sell, provided that Sophie joins the Spectre Society. Also, the house may or may not be haunted. Add that to some odd characters in the Spectre Society itself, her ex-husband’s jealous new girlfriend, and Sophie’s mother, and Sophie finds herself in another uncomfortable situation . . .

No, I actually haven’t read the previous books in the series, but it didn’t really seem to matter. Ms. Davis gives just enough of the backstory to make things make sense, and enough hints of what happened in previous novels (apparently Sophie and her boyfriend Anatoly each thought the other was a murderer) to whet my appetite for reading the other novels. It’s often interesting to read a novel in a series that has a romance involved and a couple at the heart of it, and Sophie and Anatoly’s relationship progressed nicely during the course of the novel. There was, of course, a Misunderstanding, but it felt a good deal more authentic than the fake misunderstandings that could be solved by about thirty seconds of conversation that populate other romantic stories. It also didn’t make up the majority of the plot; it was merely a side dish, and therefore worked much better for me.

It’s obvious to some degree that Ms. Davis used elements of her own biography (heritage, early marriage, mystery-novel-writing career) to make Sophie, and while this tells me exactly what Sophie looks like (there’s an author picture in the back of the book, as well as on her website), it also makes me have to remind myself that it’s not terribly likely that Ms. Davis has been around that many corpses. However, obviously the author has much more experience being half Eastern-European-Jewish and half African-American than not, and she did mention the hazards of being a bit exotic-looking: being asked what one is, as if ‘human’ and ‘American’ (by accent) aren’t enough, and attracting stares when one is with a partner who is fair, blond, and blue-eyed. I wonder if she’s covered this topic in a bit more depth in the previous volumes.

I was actually kind of surprised by the depth in this book. Having read none of the other books in the series, nor anything else by the author (and very little by the imprint), I was expecting something . . . different. Perhaps a story that put Sophie through a little less, in terms of personal hell. Learning what she did, and I obviously won’t go into it, is a hard lesson, and it was difficult to see her go through it, but ultimately quite rewarding. I’m not even sure this book falls on the list for ‘a good beach read,’ being that that would be a little too dismissive of what this novel has going for it, which is excellent characters, an interesting murder, and emotional depth. It’s a good character study in addition to a great story, and I’d recommend it, with or without its predecessors, to fans of light-to-moderate mysteries with emotional depth; or, you know, Nora Roberts fans. 4/5 stars.

This is, as the title says, a collection of new fiction and memoir by Black women (published since 1990; capitalization is the editor’s). It includes, as Ms. Danquah says in the introduction, younger authors: generally under 40 at the time of publication. The table of contents is fairly long and complicated, since many of the works are excerpts from longer pieces, so I will provide a link to the Google Books version of it: here. I had not heard of any of the authors prior to reading this volume, partly because the women included are all younger than the Alice Walker-Toni Morrison-Maya Angelou-Gloria Naylor bunch. Many of them were born after Dr. King was assassinated, and all of them have received acclaim as writers from many different sources.

Easily my favorite story in the book was Itabari Njeri’s memoir excerpt, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” from Every Good-bye Ain’t Gone. It’s about her relationship with a man who was willing to say anything to get into a woman’s bed, and while she certainly succumbed to his charms more than once or twice, eventually she found out that not only was he cheating on her, but he’d gotten two women pregnant in the same very short period of time (she was one of them). Her revenge — half of which was publishing this story — is sweet and well-deserved. If the author hadn’t indicated that it was memoir in her intro, and if the main character hadn’t had the author’s name, I would have assumed it was fiction, because it’s such a well-done tale.

A lot of the other memoirs are the same: I wouldn’t have known they were memoirs if the main character hadn’t shared the name of the author. It demonstrated for me the fluidity of the form; I’d barely read any memoir prior to this, and I think I had the idea that it was a drier form, more like a biography than fiction. Except for the first entry, which is an excerpt that reads more like a personal essay (on how the author could come to fall in love with a murderer), the fiction is nearly indistinguishable from the memoir. I say that, it should be noted, as a compliment: I love fiction in all its forms because it tells a story, and so do the memoirs of these women.

One thing that the editor elucidated in the introduction but that also stuck out to me in all of the stories was how disenfranchised these women writers felt, as in school they never read any books or stories written by someone who looked like them. I am about ten years younger than most of these women, and I went to a standard decent city public high school where about twenty percent of the students weren’t white, in the late 1990s, and I still can only think of two volumes that I read in four years of English class that weren’t written by a white man. (Black Boy, by Richard Wright, and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I do understand that the latter brings up racial issues, but the author is white and a white man is still the hero.)

It’s rather sad that things haven’t changed all that much in such a short period of time. I do know that I noticed the lack of class-read books written by women, and I did a report on Sylvia Plath to counterbalance this, but it’s still unfortunate that we didn’t read any of the aforementioned authors: Maya Angelou, who read a poem at the presidential inauguration when I was in elementary school; or Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, both of whom have won Pulitzers (the latter also won the Nobel Prize in Literature). To top it off, any of the stories in this volume would have fit incredibly well in the short-story fiction/nonfiction collection we called our English textbooks, and these are second-generation authors.

All that having been said, though, I am painfully aware that me noticing that we didn’t read enough books by women pales in comparison (no pun intended) to a young woman of color realizing that we read no books written by women of color. Overall, though, both experiences indicate a need for greater diversity in the books chosen for classroom use on a high school level. It’s almost amazing that so many young women of color had enough inspiration to become authors, in the face of overwhelming whiteness and maleness. The fact that these women, in general, decided to write realistic fiction or memoirs is quite telling: more than anything, it seems that they are compelled to tell their stories, the stories that are left out of American literature almost entirely. This collection comes highly recommended, but it is not a light set of stories. While some are more enjoyable to read, and even have happy endings, even those remind the reader of so many points that one might miss with a standard education. It will definitely cause re-evaluation of one’s own experience, but I wouldn’t have skipped any of these for the world. 5/5 stars.

This collection of short stories includes apparently 41 of his biggest and best tales, ranging from one of his first published works (“Deep Without Pity”) to three stories that had web debuts within the last couple years (“Straws,” “Golfing Vietnam,” “Fear Itself”). The tales range from a couple of punk westerns, a few pulp-type stories, straight-up science fiction, ultra-short literary fiction, a few that were intended for men’s magazines, and, of course, a few tales about rock ‘n’ roll. I won’t list all 41 titles, as that would take too much time, but interested readers can haunt the Sub Press website until they post the table of contents. This book will be published at the end of November this year.

Three of the stories are connected, as they are all about a Vietnam vet P.I. named Dan Sloane. Not many of the rest have characters that travel between stories, although there are many themes that resonate through his work. Mr. Shiner even comments in the author’s notes for a story called “Jeff Beck” that “[i]f there’s such a thing as a typical Shiner story, this is it: a magic wish that doesn’t work out; a troubled marriage; rock ‘n’ roll; and a big dose of working-class angst.” Quite often, elements from his own life story (there’s a giant autobiography on his website) show up in his stories. The story “Match” nearly happened; the main character in his novel Glimpses has a father who died the same way that Mr. Shiner’s father did. Many of his characters have unhappy marriages (he went through two), as well. One story — “Kidding Around” — is actually about someone else’s family, a writing student of his. (He obviously wrote the story with her permission.)

The last story in the book, “Lizard Men of Los Angeles,” Mr. Shiner describes (in his author’s notes on the story) as his favorite of all the stories he’s written. It’s a pulp-type story commissioned originally by Joe Lansdale, set in 1934 Los Angeles (obviously), and including Aleister Crowley, spontaneous human combustion, a stage magician and his beautiful assistant, a former child star turned ingenue, and, of course, lizard men. I loved the tone of the story; in fitting with the pulp sensibility, it was definitely tongue-in-cheek, and yet serious at the same time. I suspect that I need to read more pulp fiction, or at least the modern homages to pulp fiction. I’d really love to read more about Johnny Cairo and Mrs. Lockhart, although I doubt that any more is forthcoming.

Overall, this is an amazing collection; I would definitely recommend it for fans of his other works, and fans of short fiction such as John Crowley, Jai Claire, and even Charles de Lint, although his tone is not nearly as gentle. There’s something for nearly everyone, and while there are often violent and unpleasant events and even quite a few unlikable characters (or at least hypothetically unlikable ones), overall there’s enough to balance the novel. There’s even a children’s story, “Mark the Bunny,” which has some obvious socialist overtones, and although I wouldn’t recommend the collection as a whole for children, the story’s really hilarious for adults. 5/5 stars.

The story was inspired by his own life: Arnold Spirit, Jr. (called Junior on the rez) was born in the same town (Wellpinit) as Mr. Alexie, and made the same choice to go to Rearden, the all-white high school with an Indian as their mascot, after the same incident — discovering that his geometry book was the same book his mother had used, thirty years earlier. There, he has to confront his own heritage and what that means to him — as well as what his decision means to the rest of his reservation. He fights his own expectations, the expectations of the other students, and the expectations of his old best friend, Rowdy.

This is a really depressing book, and it’s made even more awful by the fact that it’s generally true. Junior comments that he’d been to forty-two funerals by the time he was fourteen, and most of the white kids he knew hadn’t even been to five. At fourteen, I’d been to three or four funerals, and mostly because my great-grandparents had still been alive at that age. There’s a passage about the grinding poverty that Junior’s rez has, and it burned with every word.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian, you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Even if you take out the “Indian” and substitute any other ethnic/racial minority, it’s still true, and painful. Not that I would know — I’m white, and even though I certainly didn’t grow up with money, we weren’t crushingly poor. We had, as the book says, hope — something which Junior has and clings to, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

This is realistic fiction with an extra dose of reality. For those of us who are contented white people, or those of us who believe that perhaps affirmative action is done because anyone who wants a chance can have one, this is a sock in the face. It’s also a reminder that poverty begets poverty, unfortunately — and the opposite is true. Wealth begets wealth — it’s easy to be successful when one’s parents have enough money to send one to the best schools, and the best colleges, and to start one out in life. I can’t imagine living in Junior’s situation — Mr. Alexie’s situation — and while I feel relieved that Mr. Alexie did so well, thousands in his situation didn’t.

I’d recommend this book to complacent white people. Also everyone else, although it certainly isn’t a happy book. It’s intended for YAs, and I’d say that those in that age group should enjoy it as well. It’s also a good book for stereotypical boy readers, being that a significant part of the plot revolves around basketball. Probably the most lighthearted part of the book is Junior’s drawings, and I think most readers would enjoy them as well as I did. 5/5 stars.

This bittersweet novel has two plots interwoven. One is the main story, Sal’s story, where she is taking a trip with her grandparents across the country in a car to go visit her mother, and the other is Sal’s friend Phoebe’s story, which Sal is relating to her grandparents as they travel. Both stories involve girls whose mothers left for various reasons, and their ways of dealing with the situation. Sal’s story is set in Bybanks, Kentucky, where she used to live; in Euclid, Ohio, where they moved after Sal’s mom left; and in the car, going to Idaho. Phoebe’s story is set almost exclusively in Euclid, Ohio.

I originally read the book back in about 1995 when it was still mostly new, but I’d forgotten exactly everything about it. However, I was reading carefully (as I do, sometimes) and I figured out what had happened long before the narrator let us know. I suspect that careful YA readers will be able to figure out what has happened as well, but it doesn’t diminish the emotional impact of the ending. Sal has a difficult summer, to say the least, and one can only hope that her strength of character can continue to carry her through any other difficult situations she encounters as maturely as she handled these.

I didn’t really identify with Sal; I identified more with her mother, or Phoebe’s mother. Or perhaps I just found their stories more compelling than that of a tween whose mother left. I read very carefully for the clues regarding why their mothers had left, and I found their reasons for leaving quite interesting. However, at first it’s supposed that Phoebe’s mother leaves for one reason; it turns out that it’s something entirely different. While I can understand that the second reason is valid, I almost would have preferred that she had left for the originally-supposed reason (that her life was generally unfulfilling, sans avocation). Then again, the other reason ties the stories together better. It’s possible that this can be blamed on the fact that I am an adult female, or it could just be that the mental state of the mothers were obscure, making them more tantalizing.

I know why it won the Newbery; it will be obvious to readers. For one thing, it’s exceptionally well-done. The balance between the two different stories — the flashback and the current time — is masterful, and Ms. Creech manages to enter the mind of an early-adolescent girl so thoroughly that I was drawn in completely. There are hints of other stories, for other characters, and she manages to keep these minor characters exactly where they belong, but not so far back that they’re wallpaper. For another, it’s an emotional story, and the main character and her family are very sympathetic. Obviously it’s a must-read for nearly everyone it isn’t very long and reads very quickly, but even adults will find it quite readable and quite powerful. 5/5 stars.

Novelties & Souvenirs collects all his short fiction through its publication in 2004; it was published by Harper Perennial. Four of the stories were originally published in a collection called Novelty, after one of its stories. Others were published in various formats, including a chapbook, a collection printed by Subterranean Press, Asimov’s, and a few other anthologies. The titles include “The Green Child,” “An Earthly Woman Sits and Sings,” “The Nightingale Sings at Night,” “Missolonghi 1824,” “The Reason for the Visit,” “Novelty,” “Gone,” “Antiquities,” “In Blue,” and “Great Work of Time.” They include retellings, dystopias, alternate histories, and most other kinds of speculative fiction.

Probably the greatest work in the volume is “Great Work of Time,” being that it’s the longest and, after all, a World Fantasy Award winner. It’s perhaps seventy pages long, and encompasses several episodes. The basic concept is that there is a secret society who can travel through time, and they’ve been ‘fixing’ the past to bring about a less-violent future that still contains a British empire. Cecil Rhodes, who in our reality died of old age and donated his entire fortune to Oxford to create the Rhodes Scholarship, died young in Mr. Crowley’s reality and donated all his money to this secret brotherhood (the ‘Otherhood’). Unfortunately, there are significant problems associated with constant revamping of history, and they encounter too many of them.

A few of the stories had an overarching conceit that they were being told by one character in the story to another. “Antiquities” is one of them; I believe the two characters were having a drink together, or something else innocuous. “Missolonghi 1824″ is another one of those; the main character is an unnamed poet assumed to be Byron, telling a story in which he encounters a Greek god (perhaps) to a young boy. Even a significant part of “Great Work of Time” was two characters discussing the story, rather than the events actually happening. In that way, I suppose that Mr. Crowley is fond of passive scenes, but I don’t think that makes the stories any less exciting.

In some ways, these are literary fiction stories rather than speculative fiction stories. By that I mean that typically lit-fic stories are concerned with an image, an idea, or a moment in time, rather than a plot, and spec-fic stories of the kind written by Michael Swanwick and Allen Steele are concerned with telling a good tale. These are more similar to Jai Claire’s work, or perhaps the genre- and mind-bending tales of Robert Freeman Wexler. Fans of Charles de Lint will also recognize some of the elements, although Mr. de Lint’s tales are generally gentler. I would definitely not call Mr. Crowley’s work plotless; obviously this isn’t the case, but he’s content to end the stories where they will, rather than tying everything up with a bow. 5/5 stars, and highly recommended to fans of the authors mentioned before, primarily adults.

Macondo is a city somewhere in Central America, founded by Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula; he and a good deal of other people hacked through the forest to find the proper place to build. Over the course of the next hundred years, the town, largely isolated, rises to a peak of activity and prosperity, and then gradually sinks until it just dries up and blows away in the dust. Some of the Buendia family members become famous throughout the area, for different reasons — military, craftsmanship, etc. — and the strength of Ursula ties it all together for longer than imagined. Through it all, the Buendia family continues to lead the town, even when the years of moderate craziness and even some inbreeding bring the family down to a level never imagined by the first generation or two.

This is not a happy book. I think in some ways, the only remotely happy characters were Ursula and her husband (there are so many men named Jose Arcadio Buendia in the novel that I’ll try to identify them by station). Ursula had a very long life, and she accomplished a good deal during it, mostly involved with holding her family together and raising moderately successful children, grandchildren, and the like. Jose Arcadio Buendia (Mr. Ursula), although he eventually went crazy, lived a fairly long and intellectual life; even when he was tied to a tree, he spent a good deal of time philosophizing, and he didn’t seem entirely unhappy to be allowed to be alone with his thoughts. Other characters, unfortunately, die for love; go crazy unpleasantly; are killed in horrible fashions; fall in love with completely unsuitable people (including close relatives); take up the wrong cause; or a hundred other miserable situations.

Mr. Marquez (and his translator) did a very good job of keeping the different characters, all with the same two names (Jose Arcadio Buendia or Aureliano Buendia) distinct, but I was very happy that there was a family tree at the beginning of the book. For example, one of the Aurelianos has seventeen sons, all named Aureliano (by seventeen different women). A lot of the women have similar names, too: Amaranta, Ursula, and Remedios are three of the most common. Most of the Buendia children are male, though (hm: male author and patriarchal culture much? although yes, Ursula is one of the two strongest characters in the book), and their fathers tend to insist on the family names, despite Ursula’s conviction that the names control the personalities and the destinies.

In terms of genre literature, ‘magic realism’ is just a literary-sounding name for Latin-American primary-world fantasy — er, what we might call ‘urban fantasy,’ were it set in New York today. An angel (or perhaps a devil) shows up in Macondo one day. One of the daughters, Remedios the Beauty, ascends directly into heaven while hanging up the washing one day. Ursula lives to be well over a hundred — in the range of 135-150 years. Several other (female) characters do as well. A couple characters are born with a pig’s tail — while that is not exactly pure fantasy (humans are occasionally born with vestigial tails), the symbolism it takes on in the book makes it more of a legend than a genetic fact. There is a period where it rains for four years straight, and an insomnia plague where none of the characters sleeps for a couple years. All of these things are fantastic, to a point.

I still don’t understand where the line is between a fantasy novel and a work of literature. Based on the books I’ve read this week, a fantasy novel that ends unhappily could be considered a literary novel. Yes, of course, it could be a matter of quality, but I’m sure I’ve read spec-fic novels that were as good as the supposedly non-genre novels I’ve read this week. I have to admit that I’m definitely interested in reading other books by the authors I’ve read this week. The best of my fantasy novels do the same thing, though. I don’t know if I learned anything through this little exercise, but I would use this week of reviews as proof that you can’t judge a book by where it’s filed in a bookstore or library. One Hundred Years of Solitude, of course, gets 5/5 stars, although I would like to warn readers that the book is rather depressing.