Magical Realism Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Battle of the Titans: Mini-Reviews

Catherine — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:35:51 +0000

No battle and no giants here. Instead, I’ve got quick reviews of two chunkster books I read this fall. Chunkster being the technical term for big-ass, over 500 pages each, tomes. Both are set in prehistoric times and are the kind of books you’ll either settle into or set aside. I’ve read a lot […]

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The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

Catherine — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 08:53:02 +0000

If you’ve read the Jane Austen novel Pride & Prejudice or seen the movie you know that Lydia Bennet was one of the most annoying little sisters in the fictional world, nearly bringing down her family’s reputation with her foolish behavior and hasty decisions. But what if there was more to her than that? Melinda […]

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Parakeet: A Novel

Catherine — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 04:52:36 +0000

It’s the week before her wedding when the Bride sees her grandmother. Not unusual except her grandmother has been dead for over ten years and what she sees is a parakeet who talks to her. Grandma parakeet is worried about the impending wedding, but more importantly she wants the Bride to find her older brother, […]

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Nothing to See Here

Catherine — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 05:09:52 +0000

Friday’s book review was a little dark so I’m starting the week with something much lighter. Not only did I never think I’d read a novel where children spontaneously combust, I definitely didn’t think I would chew through it one night and fall in love with it on page four. Which is to say, don’t […]

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Virgil Wander: A Novel by Leif Enger

Catherine — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 07:18:31 +0000

Greenstone, Minnesota is a hard luck little town. Once known for its taconite mines it has settled into a slow decline when Virgil Wander’s car goes over a cliff and into the lake one night in the midst of an unexpected snowstorm. He’s only alive because the local junkman was on the shore, dove in […]

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She Would Be King

Catherine — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 07:54:06 +0000

An unlikely trio comes together in the fight for a new nation in She Would Be King, Wayétu Moore’s debut novel about Liberia. There is 18-year-old Gbessa, exiled from her small West African village as a witch, who survives the bite of a poisonous snake. June Dey is a 15-year-old Virginian slave, who kills two […]

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The Pasha of Cuisine

Catherine — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 07:36:14 +0000

The light radiating from the Pasha of Cuisine spread across fields, gardens, orchards, and farms, and from there penetrated kitchens, the hands of cooks, and palates, beginning a new era of opulence, prosperity, joy, and health. In short, a new golden age of taste. Set in the time of Aghas and Sultans, in Constantinople, the […]

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Indelible: A Novel by Adelia Saunders

Catherine — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 08:50:44 +0000

For as long as Magdalena could remember the words had always been there, although she didn’t used to think of them as words. At first she didn’t think of them as anything, they were just extensions of a person’s skin… What would it be like to know the most important facts of any person’s […]

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Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

Catherine — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 07:05:47 +0000

Salman Rushdie is back with Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, a story about the strangeness that resulted from a seam being opened between the world of humans and the world of the supernatural, as embodied by jinns and their female counterparts, jiniri. Of the jiniri there was none more powerful than the […]

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The Book of Speculation

Catherine — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 07:52:48 +0000

Debut novelist Erika Swyler does not waste any time before throwing the reader into the deep end of The Book of Speculation. The novel begins with Simon Watson, a librarian with the ability to hold his breath for underwater for almost ten minutes at a time, a skill passed on to him by his mother […]

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