Hard to Swallow?

“Boy swallows universe” shocked me. I too had read the hype and was expecting something unusual………but not THIS unusual.

Usually I jot down my feelings after reading a book that I enjoy and post it online disguised as a “review”. But after finishing Trent Dalton’s novel I just couldn’t write anything myself. Words wouldn’t come. All I could see were the huge poster-sized words in my head shouting, “WHAT THE HEY?” Asking me what I thought I had just read.

I still don’t know. I liked what I read. No! I loved what I read. It was good writing but was it real? And did that matter? Is that the question that matters anyway when you’re reading fiction?

I read Alexis Wright’s Black and White novel of the top end of Australia earlier this year and “Carpentaria” pulled me up short too. With the same puzzlement. The exact same questions. What’s going on? Is it real?

Maybe my literary education is patchy and I’ve just never run across magical realism before.

I love being surprised when I read. I hate it if I think something is about to happen, and it does. So you’d think Magical Realism would be right up my alley. But there’s another more childish thread in my make up that keeps asking, “But is it real? Is it really happening? Is the little blue wren REALLY there.”