New Essay: "A Jolt of Vertigo" at Late Last Night Books

I had the pleasure of guest blogging at Late Last Night Books this week about magical realism:

I have never been interested in magical realism, or so I’d thought. One Hundred Years of Solitude has sat in my pile of to-read books for almost a decade now, and although I enjoyed Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and his collection of short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, I thought his use of magical realism as metaphor could be a bit gimmicky. I have always written fiction that concentrate on domestic lives, those quiet intersections of reality that ignite into disaster...

 
But, surprisingly, my first two novels rely heavily on magical realism. I have always dug in dark, difficult places in my writing, psychological landscapes even too hard for me to examine without couching it in some alternate place where I could explore it with some protection.


To read more, go here.