The Best Realist Books that Use Magic to Say Hard Things

Like most children growing up with fairy tales and Bible instruction, I believed in miracles and magic. But it was the death of my father at age eight, then having his spirit return to my childhood bedroom to comfort and reassure me, that planted in me a core belief in dimensions beyond material reality. Other influences, including living as a neurodiverse woman and raising a neurodiverse son, working as a science journalist, and reading quantum physics, helped me re-embrace the liminal as part of my adult worldview. The most interesting novels to me often carry subtle messages and bring awareness to underrepresented people and issues, and many do this using magic and the fantastic.

In my debut novel, Orchid Child, a teenage boy who hears voices and talks to trees taps his neurodiversity and wisdom of his Celtic ancestors to confront a century of family trauma. As you might have guessed, the 'hard thing' to talk about in my novel is mental difference.

Writing and talking about the blend of real and magic elements in Orchid Child made me take another look at how authors of recent novels have used the fantastic in otherwise realist scenarios to explore social/political issues we find difficult to talk about in real life, like prejudice against people of color and climate change, or questions we wrestle with like how to balance life and art, and what makes a 'good mother.'

Here are five newish novels that, like Orchid Child, use magic to deal with aspects of our individual and collective lives that are hard to talk about head on.

Read my whole post on Shepard, a cool new site for connecting readers with the books they're looking for.

https://shepherd.com/best-books/reali...