Magical surrealism

Magical Realism

BLISS and magical realism does not, in 1960s sci-fi-speak, compute. Not blessed with the highest tolerance levels known to mankind, I can’t see her suspending her disbelief sufficiently, or for a long enough time, to get through a magical realist novel.

I read 100 Years Of Solitude on holiday, in Portugal. Four of us from the football team were away together. Two of us were readers. P was reading I Robot. The cover was something like this, before:

The after version was similar, just with a cock and hairy balls biro’d onto the robot. Somehow, my 100 Years Of Solitude remained undefaced:

It was exactly that Picador paperback edition, too. I didn’t know it was a work of magic realism. I was in my early twenties and didn’t know very much at all, really. I knew it was a magical work of dazzling brilliance, and went on to grab and read every Marquez book I could lay my hands on, quicktime.

Anyway, it went something like this:

ME: You’d like the new Amis, it’s a WWII extermination camp novel and Amis researches those sort of books really well, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Maybe not the new Will Self so much, although that’s based on…

BLISS: Oh. Right. Anyway…

Then like this:

ME: [Seeing her on the first few pages of Colourless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage] what’re’ya doing with that?

BLISS: You said I should read it.

ME: No, I said [hits that “what’s the point / better left alone” moment]…nevermind. Any good?

BLISS: Yeah. So far.

So, from nowhere, she’s likely to have read the new Murakami before I have. She’s always been full of surprises, but this would be one of her more unpredictable enterprises.