Books With A Good Bit of Magical Realism

by Rita Leganski
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5 books
Books transport us outside of time and place or, sometimes, deeper into them. They let us travel, far-flung and searching. They often bring us home. Through them we find a deeper understanding of just what it is to be human.
The books I recommend here turn reality inside-out (in two of them time runs backwards). You’ll find quite a variety of characters in these books: one that talks to the dead and another that has fascinating conversations with a tiger. One who ponders miracles as he reminisces, and one who tenderly nurtures a garden of poisonous things.
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

F. Scott Fitzgerald, 2008
If you’re interested in time running backward, this one is for you. Benjamin Button comes into this world as a seventy-year-old man completely capable of speaking. His life continues to run counter-clockwise until he becomes a newborn little fellow with no memories of his amazing, unusual past. His story sparks a pondering about the journey that is life.

A Gracious Plenty

Sheri Reynolds, 1999
Finch Nobles is a scrappy gal who’s been scarred by boiling water. Loner that she is, Finch becomes a cemetery caretaker – a job that turns out to be quite intriguing when she begins to hear the dead talking amongst themselves. She enjoys the stories they tell and eventually engages them in conversation, and they become her only friends. This story is engaging from the start, and its characters are quite charming. They help Finch find out something she needs to know.

Life of Pi

Yann Martel, 2013
An interweaving of fantasy and philosophy, this is the story of Piscine Molitor Patel (nicknamed Pi). His zookeeper father loads Pi and his family along with a menagerie of animals onto a cargo ship meant to take them from Pondicherry, India to Canada. But fate brings a shipwreck, and Pi ends up on a lifeboat in the company of wild animals. And that’s where he meets a talking Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This book is full to the brim with imagination and revelation.

Peace Like a River

Leif Enger, 2001
Sometimes if we’re looking to learn something, we can learn it from our younger selves. This one is so very beautiful and unforgettable. It’s told by Reuben Land, a man who reminisces about a quest he once went on with his father, Jeremiah, and his younger sister, the unforgettable and very brave Swede. The three of them had been looking for a loved one. This story is a reflection of love, loss, and faith as seen through the eyes of Reuben’s eleven-year-old self. Beautifully told, it ponders life, death, and miracles.

The Third Angel

A Novel
Alice Hoffman, 2009
Love can be enchanting, but then again, it can be disenchanting too. This book tells of women and the wrong sorts of men they fall for. One of its characters, a grieving mother, grows “belladonna, thorn apple, hemlock, black nightshade ... everything poisonous” in her garden. As with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it’s told in reverse until it comes to 12-year-old Lucy Green in 1952, a tragic accident, and a forty-year search for the angel she pins her hopes on.