Thoughts on Magical Realism Query

[Silvio]

Hi everyone, I was hoping to get some feedback on my query and see if it'd pick your interest. Any comment is more than welcome. Thanks!

------

Dear Mr./Ms X.,

Safran has only one memory of his mother, and knows nothing of her. Until the day he is approached by a man who tells him where she has been all this time, and still is to this day.

Problem is, the man informing Safran doesn’t look like the philanthropic type: he goes by the name of F and represents an underground organisation. Also, he doesn’t suggest for Safran to go after his mother; he orders him to.

Torn whether to play along in the hope of finally meeting his mother, it’s the encounter with a girl with no name, but with a deep connection to Safran that goes beyond words, which gives him the strength to embark on this journey.

Together they travel to a mountain village, where the retrieval of manuscripts telling people’s lives forces Safran to confront his own life and the absences defining it.

HERE SOMEONE’S CRAZY (73,000 words) is literary fiction with elements of magical realism that tells the story of a 22-year-old who sets out to find his estranged mother, only to end up finding a secluded house from whose chimney manuscripts telling people’s lives scatter up into the sky.

Thanks for your consideration.

[Harlyn]

Hey Silvio.
I don't know much about the sypnosis; my interest sparks on horror genre. But there is a thing I will point out since you made mention of any comment is welcomed. The last sentence when you wrote about the book itself should have been your first paragraph that is after you have said your name and a brief of why you considered that particular agent. It is something I have come across on the many courses and articles I've read about writing a query. Good luck.

[Ekaterina]

Hi Silvio! The start of the query works great for me, I got curious about the story. Both Safran and F sound like characters I would like to read about. I’d wish a better way to connect to the girl with no name though, “a deep connection” is, for me, too vague to be immediately interesting. I found a sentence introducing her (“Torn… journey”) confusing. From the Query Shark Blog I learned to avoid big sentences in a query – unless the usage is justified, and I’m not sure it is here.
One more thing: I don’t quite feel from the query what is at stake for Safran. As he is thinking, “whether to play along”, I don’t see what bad thing happens if he decides not to.
I hope any of that was helpful. Good luck with querying!

[Silvio]

Thank you both for your feedback, it is very much appreciated.
You're probably right, Harlyn, I need to move that bit up as introduction/overview to my query. In truth, I added that bit in the end as a template for those agents which require an elevator-pitch as part of the query (this is how Stephanie Wrobel said she dealt with it in her blog, you find it in the comment section - https://www.stephaniewrobel.com/for-w...), but might simply take it out for those who do not.
Thanks Ekaterina too: I'm still trying to figure out how to present the girl with no name charachter. In a previous query, the sentence was "...it’s the encounter with a girl with no name, but who knows more about Safran than she admits...". I had then changed it to the one you read because a friend regarded the "connection" thing as more important than the "knowing more the she admits" thing, but perhaps it worked better as it was before. It probably sounds a bit more mysterious the latter, which is probably what you want in a query.
Thanks again to both of you!