(Trigger Warning: If you love Murakami, I slag him off a lot in this "review" because of his popular association to magical realism which I think doesn't stand up to scrutiny when compared with other, mainly female magical realism authors. I could be wrong so calm down ok.)

This was so so so so funny. That is IT that is the review!

No seriously I have read a lot of magical realist books this year - the most notorious of them being Murakami - and this was the funniest of the lot. I need more funny magical realism books, God! The subconscious is so hilarious and yet some authors (like Murakami, sorry, I just don't like him at all!) only use it to be cerebral, edgy, and tragic. That's what I was thinking in between crying from laughing too hard at this book: life is so damn funny, and we should learn to laugh more. Especially at such arbitrary social norms like gender and sex. It's really not that serious. In fact, nothing is funnier. When will we learn to just laugh?

This reads like a queer fairy tale for adults, both in the sense that it is so fucking bizarre (affectionate) and in the sense that it slides through the gender spectrum like it's no one's business! That is what magical realism is for. When you have no logical limitations to the story that you are trying to tell, it's not just about how much you can push it, or about flexing your emplotment skills by creating thematic connections (again talking about Murakami), it's about what the hell are you even trying to say.

Magical realism is not an excuse to be vague about your message (Murakami again!!). It's not an excuse to cast the widest readership net so they can treat your book like some puzzle and you can soar to the bestsellers list (should I still even say it...)

Magical realism is an opportunity to actually say something outside of the confines of conventional meaning; to imagine worlds outside of social norms specifically so that it can be critiqued, destroyed, and rebuilt. Bifo (Berardi, in Chaos and Poetry) said it better: "It is a revelation of a possible sphere of experience not yet experienced (that is to say, the experienceable). It acts on the limit between the conscious and the unconscious in such a way that this limit is displaced [...] and resignified."

In this case, the issue being tackled is clear and specific: gender, sex, the human body. The message is clear: it is fucking beautiful and magical, no matter what shape it takes, no matter how much it changes, the body - your body - deserves to be loved, appreciated, and cared for. That's the kind of cohesive message that correctly utilizing magical realism can unlock in a narrative. Fuck Murakami.
 
Apart from this weird author, more magical realism authors that you can follow include Isabel Allende (House of Spirits), Namwali Serpell (The Furrows), Toni Morrison (Beloved), and Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)!