Fantasy with Friends – hosted by Pages Unbound – poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.
I am writing this quite soon after my previous Fantasy With Friends post and can confirm, unfortunately, the cold has hit me very hard indeed! Thankfully I largely WFH, so can remain in my little sanctuary without worrying too much about venturing outside. As I write this, I am surrounded by so many cold/flu meds I feel I can stock a pharmacy! Hopefully by the time I write the next Fantasy With Friends post it’ll have eased off and I’ll feel like I can breathe again!
Fantasy with Friends:
Magical Realism & Fantasy
Do you see magical realism as related to fantasy? Do you enjoy reading it? Why or why not?
I definitely think it’s related, and sometimes the line blurs between a book being magical realism as its own, separate genre, and magical realism as a subgenre of fantasy. There is, of course, a lot of elements fantasy and magical realism shares, and there are subgenres of fantasy that sit close to magical realism. Urban Fantasy often features fantasy in the real world, low fantasy is used to describe fantasy with little fantasy/magical elements, paranormal romance is often romance with a ‘fantasy’ being set in the real world. But where magical fantasy differs, to me, is usually in the themes.
I think, too, with this kind of genre, the definition becomes quite subjective. However, to me, magical realism sits between fantasy and literary, and often the strongest magical realism books come from communities where magic is held closely, for various reasons, and where communities have often suffered through tragedy and upheaval. It makes the magic in the book read as closer to realism, compared to, say, urban fantasy, where we often get an alternative, magical version of our real world.
I don’t read, perhaps, as much magical realism as I would like, but I do tend to enjoy it. I think magical realism can introduce a really fresh, different way of looking at the world, for good or bad. I also think in the way it is typically used, it can be utilised to deal with some horrific tragedies, moments in history that can leave a deep scar, either through directly referencing these or by creating a parallel with a fictional event. I think magical realism often treads between fantasy and horror, and I’ve read some horror books that overlap heavily with magical realism, or are both at the same time, and I think with some magical realism, the reasons I enjoy it are similar to horror and other fantasy books – it gives me a different perspective, it can be cathartic, it opens up the world in often unexpected ways. Because most of what I’ve read that can be called magical realism has also been translated into English, not originally written in English, it adds the dimension of enjoying a translated book as well, which often read very differently to books originally in English.
Overall, magical realism is a really interesting, fascinating genre that has the ability to pull from both horror and fantasy to create something quite unique, and usually set outside the Anglosphere. And it’s a genre I would love to read more of, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know!
