Science Fiction and Fantasy

Alice Hoffman's latest novel

I have to be honest and say these are the genres I have least experience of and I had to think about them very carefully as I set up Lotus Flower Book Club. I had always thought of these genres as the domain of male readers and asked the advice of my friend Jean because she reads fantasy and sci-fi almost exclusively, but there was nothing she offered me that I could really get into. Then I had a thought about it and realised that actually I do read these genres but because it wasn’t Lord of the Rings, Terry Pratchett or Isaac Asimov I had dismissed them.

Over the last twelve months I’ve had some great reading experiences and when I thought about it a lot of them could be described as fantasy.

 The first one I thought of was Ali Shaw’s beautiful book The Girl with Glass feet which is set on a faux Scandinavian island where our heroine literally has feet that are turning into glass. She is travelling around the island trying to find someone who understands what is happening to her and who can hopefully reverse the effects. The books is so beautifully written that you are immediately drawn into this strange world and the predicament of the girl, so much so that it did not occur to me it was a fantasy. I had a similar experience with Erin Morgenstern’s ‘The Night Circus’ where we are drawn into the world of people who do actual magic. The circus is real, but is embellished with the real magic to make it even more incredible. There is a competition between magicians over who can create the most beautiful illusion and I had accepted this without thinking for a moment that I was reading a fantasy. Another magical novel that had been on my shelves for a long time was Jonathon Strange and Dr. Norrell set in eighteenth century England. It was such a huge book that I’d been avoiding it but I enjoyed The Night Circus so much I thought it was time to give it a go. I was immediately sucked into the story by the initial setting in York Minster where I’d just visited but then by the curious fellow with the silvery hair who seems to be genuine, but has a sinister side and an ability to bewitch. The only men able to challenge his enchantment are Dr Norrell who has put away practising magic, and a new magician called Jonathon Strange. The men start by working together but soon the young apprentice is challenging his master and the spells become more and more incredible as the two try to outdo each other. It was an incredible book and all three I’ve written about were so much fun that I was sorry when they ended.

I spent a week in hospital late last year and a friend brought a book for me to borrow. At university I did a module in Gothic, Grotesque and Monstrous literature which led to my dissertation in disability and difference. During my research I did a lot of reading about freak shows and the book she brought me was Ransom Riggs novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children which is based upon strange photos of curious twins, a baby with a dog’s body and a tiny child inside a light bulb. Riggs has woven an amazing story round these photos and created a wonderful cast of freaks, living in a children’s home and happened upon by one teenage boy on holiday with his Father. What he doesn’t realise is that these particular freaks have special powers and they are living the same day in 1942 over and over again. Miss Peregrine is there to watch over them and our hero has a very special part to play in this, just as his grandfather did generations before.

Finally I read a lot of Alice Hoffman and although some of her fiction is definitely realist there have always been supernatural elements, such as her novel Practical Magic about two sisters who are witches or The Ice Queen about a woman with hit by lightning and the strange effects that has on her physically and mentally. Despite encountering mediums, witches, giants and spirits in Hoffman’s books I never thought of her as fantasy – I saw it more as magic realism. Then I read her latest novel The Museum of Extraordinary Things, set in late 19^th Century Coney Island Hoffman weaves the tale of Coralie Sardie who is born with webbed fingers and the museum where she grows up. Her father runs a museum of the extraordinary or a freak show to most of the visitors. There is a wolf man and a butterfly girl and Coralie herself who is dressed in a tail and becomes a mermaid in a tank. He also wants to drum up interest in the museum by spreading the rumour of strange sea creature swimming in the Hudson River. Hoffman weaves a tale based in a historical time and place and while painting a beautifully realistic picture she inhabits it with magical creatures and their adventures.

It turns out I do read fantasy and within Lotus Flower Book Club these sorts of books can be found on the Purple Lotus list where spiritual and mystical books belong.