Some Kind of Fairy Tale [Hardcover]

What can I say about a Graham Joyce novel that I haven't said before? Joyce has never ceased to entertain me with his eclectic and adept ability to blend fantasy and reality together in a way that is not only believable, but incandescent. In "Some Kind of Fairy Tale," his skill as a storyteller seems to flow effortlessly, meandering here and there, revealing snippets of the lives of people growing older, whose dreams have not quite withered on the vine of experience and quotidian living, but have weathered, hardened and metamorphosed into something a bit different from youthful expectations.

Within this slowly changing landscape live Peter, his wife Genevieve, and his children. During the halcyon days of young adulthood, Peter considers working in the field of psychology, but when doubt and disappointment flicker through his mind like a dark shadow he decides instead to become a blacksmith.

Over twenty years before, he and his best mate Richie cease being friends. His sixteen-year-old sister Tara whom Richie loves with a passionate and jealous abandon disappears while walking through the woods and their parents and the authorities look upon Richie as the prime suspect.

Now seemingly from out of nowhere, Tara returns looking frazzled but not a day older from that moment twenty years earlier when she entered the wood. Her explanation borders on the delusional; she was abducted by one of the little people--a handsome fairy who took her to a place far away in an adjacent reality where time is measured differently. As far as she is concerned only six months have passed.

Mixed emotions of relief, incredulity and anger catapult her family and in particular Peter into a mode of defensiveness that no amount of recounting can erode. Was she abducted? Had an ordinary man hurt her in some way and forced her mind into conjuring up a fairy tale that she could accept without loosing her sanity? Did she simply run away to avoid some unpleasantness occurring to her at the time? Does she expect her family and Richie to acknowledge her feeble explanation so that she could avoid an ultimate accountability? Or is her story true?

Expertly, Joyce weaves the voices of Tara, Richie, Peter and others into a chorus of disbelieving hope as they attempt to piece together what happened in the past and the effect it has on the present and future. His telling of small things--everyday events that register the routine conditions the reader to trust his narrators even when they lead him/her to places not so familiar and decidedly more sinister. As in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, the beautiful suddenly shifts just slightly and an ugly reality threatens to expose the true machinations alive in the mind of the witch and the lengths the innocent will go to resurrect themselves.

Joyce's command of portraying the British countryside and the colloquial speech of its natives aids in crafting a tale that shimmers in and out of that other dimension where such folk as fairies might live. He depicts his population of little people with the same dire respect as Marion Zimmer Bradley in her novel "The Mists of Avalon" and Keith Donohue's The Stolen Child. Joyce lulls one into belief and no question goes unanswered by the novel's last page.

Bottom line? Graham Joyce's "Some Kind of Fairy Tale" does not disappoint. Although other novels have attempted to utilize the theme of fairy abduction and the psychology of those who disappear from conventional life with some degree of limited success (I call to mind Jennifer McMahon's Don't Breathe a Word: A Novel), Joyce manages to suspend disbelief, create a small world that hinges on a small amount of people and nudge the reader into that space that is east of the sun west of the moon without protest. Immensely readable, "Some Kind of Fairy Tale" will have you wishing Joyce was more prolific. Highly recommended.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

Twenty years ago, the lovely, charming, sixteen-year-old Tara Martin disappeared in a remnant of English primeval forest. Her parents were distraught, hundreds of searchers combed the area, and the police arrested her budding-rock-musician boyfriend Richie on suspicion of murder. Then without warning, Tara shows up at her parents' door on Christmas Day looking thin, dirty--and still sixteen. Of course her parents and her now-middle-aged brother Peter ask where she's been. Tara claims she met a man on a white horse, who asked her to ride away with him to the place most people call Fairyland. She was there for only six months, but the world she returned to has aged twenty years.

Much of the suspense in Some Kind of Fairy Tale centers around where Tara has really been, and even whether she's really Tara. She's sent to a dentist who confirms her identity--but also her age of sixteen. She's sent for a physical examination and a brain scan, but she's healthy. She's sent to an elderly, eccentric psychiatrist called Vivian Underwood to whom she narrates her experiences, since almost no one else will listen. The experiences are at once beautiful and frightening, awe inspiring and base--Joyce uses folklore as an anchor rather than merely repeating it. Underwood diagnoses amnesia and some delusional system (he can't decide on the label) that both conceals and symbolizes the cruel but more ordinary abuse he assumes that Tara is suppressing. Her parents and brother accept his diagnosis, but their relief and tolerance soon give way to irritation because Tara doesn't conform to their lower-middle-class conventions of behavior. Richie, however, still loves and accepts Tara unconditionally, and she's pulling him out of the emotional and musical slump he's been in for years.

Other characters include Peter and his wife Genevieve's large and rowdy family of children, and an elderly neighbor called Mrs. Larwood, who is more relevant to the plot than at first appears.

The other part of the suspense centers around not where Tara has been, but where she will decide to go next. To reveal this would be a spoiler, but I can say that the ending is both deeply poignant and healing. At its core, this book is an exploration of personal identity, membership in a family/community/relationship, and the tensions between the individual and others. Joyce tries to leave open the puzzle of whether Tara's account of her experiences is factual (fantasy) or merely symbolizes something more mundane. This increases the sense of wonder but left me knowing where I stand on the issue.

Tara Martin disappeared more than a decade ago. She left behind her distraught parents, haunted boyfriend Richie, and her hurting younger brother Peter. Now, years later, Tara has come back. And her whereabouts have everyone questioning what's real what isn't. Tara claims that she has been away with the fairies in their world.

SOME KIND OF FAIRY TALE had a wonderful idea: is Tara's story true? Is there really a fairy world? I love ambiguous fantasy, and this book definitely had that. I was left wondering if I had just had the wool pulled over my eyes constantly, which I like. Graham Joyce's language is beautiful and descriptive; he uses it to create England and the supposed fairy world unique.

However, I had some problems dealing with the pacing and the actions of the characters. The book takes its time to let the characters come into their own. We see Tara and Peter's parents interactions with each other, then how they interact with their children. We see how Peter interacts with his wife and their children, all while dealing with Tara's arrival. Also, Tara narrates a few chapters to explain her side of the story. Because of this, the pacing feels anticlimactic. The switch in narration was disorienting.

I am in the minority when it comes to this book. While beautifully written, it was easy for me to put this down or skip ahead to see how certain characters dealt with their feeling toward Tara. For a select audience.