Making for magic realism: Graham Joyce’s The Limits of Enchantment

Graham Joyce’s The Limits of Enchantment is a novel recommended by someone in my writers’ group who described an extraordinary scene in which a naked young initiate into the Craft crouches in a hedge and communes with a hare. I had never heard of Joyce and went off to the local Hay library where the novel was not on the shelves but was praised by the librarian. So I asked for a copy to be put aside for me and went along to fetch it as soon as a copy came in.

 

Graham Joyce is a fantasy writer who grew up in a mining town near Coventry in the UK and teaches at the University of Nottingham. He was influenced in the writing of The Limits of Enchantment by the work of Angela Carter (that alchemy with gothic!) and Fay Weldon.

 

“It’s about two women living on the margins of society. They are both respected and feared by the community. When their way of life is threatened, they have to defend themselves. Where I live in the English Midlands there are still today pagan festivals at Eastertime, and the idea for the novel came from the annual ‘Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking’ festival that takes place in Leicestershire. “

 

Immensely readable and taking Wicca away from schoolgirls. Joyce is writing about the English MIdlands he recalls from childhood – he grew up in Leicester — and a girl named Fern with an aptitude for the Craft, living with an elderly herbalist and unlicenced midwife called Mammy. The name was too much Deep South and voodoo for an English folk magic tale, but the characters are strong and the dilemma around that witchy vocation very realistic.

 

Fern is fascinated by the 1960s space project and satellites, the music of Green Onions, attracted to but wary of the group of hippies who arrive to live in the village. She wants to become a health practitioner and develop the traditions Mammy has shared with her but doesn’t know how much she believes in the Craft. And Mammy is dying in a country hospital so Fern must decide for herself and begin dealing with economic hardship and life choices on her own.  Fascinating account of a girl turning into a hare during a druggy initiation. Lovely subtext too on ‘blink and you miss your life’, the follies of not paying attention to daily reality. But the romantic theme was very predictable and the enemies of the helpful witches stay enemies and the good village folk all turn up trumps. More complexity and surprise needed in characterization.

 

Taking a break before I tackle another Graham Joyce — hoping there is a development towards the complex and more psychological depth. The Uncanny needs plenty of the everyday to hold my attention.