Magical realism is probably my favourite genre, I first discovered it in my early 20’s when reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel “100 years of solitude” which was both torturous and tremendous to read- torture because it’s slow paced spanning over 3 generations and the language that describes the daily life of the family is very realist and at times tedious- just like real life and there have been times where I’ve lost my patience and had mild tantrums at the lack of action in that novel and then suddenly like a long awaited orgasm something mystical or odd happens which unfolds like a rare flower blooming in a mundane landscape. Needless to say 100 years of solitude is actually a favourite novel of mine- with divine hot chocolate that upon sipping, made the local priest levitate 4 inches off the ground, a girl hanging out bed sheets to dry, suddenly looks up at the sky and without saying a word, floats up to heaven never to be seen again, a boy is born with a pigs tail and it rained for 4 years, 11 months and 2 days in the epic tale. It is a unique literary experience, overwhelming in its virtuosity and magnificent in scope.

So what is magical realism? Magic realism is a technique which combines the real and the imaginary to create a fantastical, yet believable story, and also forces us to question the absurdity of our everyday lives, as if on a long, very normal and boring train journey to work and then suddenly your mind drifts into a seeping day dream. In the magical realism world, the people treat magical happenings as normal and part of every day life- a flying carpet is not awe-inspiring but perhaps something useful to society? And a beating heart made of diamonds could be sold on ebay? And a house is jealous of a girl as though it has emotions and a soul?

Magic realism is what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe. So with that being said, here are 7 of my favourite magical realist novels you might fancy reading.

The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker

A stunning and lyrical novel about a young girl called Ari, her invisible seahorse, a turbulent childhood and her poetic, magical view of the world around her.

The language so poetic, so allusive, so enigmatic that for the first few pages I found myself agreeing with Ari’s teachers later in the book as he reads one of her stories: “I haven’t a clue what half of it means but I feel it, I see it, and on some level I understand it completely.”

The puzzlement clears soon and it becomes obvious that Ari is telling her story in the only way she can –sideways because the full on reality is too harsh.

The novel follows Ari from eight — when her father kills himself, her mother has a breakdown, and the sisters are doled out to various relatives — to sixteen when she has an opportunity to put into action the lessons life has taught her. During those eight years, Ari bounces between wonderful, nurturing situations and people — and other people and situations that will test all her resilience.

A very hauntingly, beautiful book, buy it here: The Clay Girl

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Lesley Walton

This book reminds me of traditional fairytales in their purest forms – before being sanitized or gentled for the presumed fragility of young minds. it positively drips with death and loss: people cutting out their own hearts, turning into birds, people suffering endlessly because of impossible loves.

and in the midst of all this, a girl is born with a pair of wings.

It is magical realism at the height of its potential. it is like Marquez in its chronicling of the relentless suffering of the different generations of a family, and it is esquivel in its food-as-magic: “Happy smiles were shared between the bride and groom, but it was the cake their guests remembered – the vanilla custard filling, the buttercream finish, the slight taste of raspberries that had surely been added to the batter. No one brought home any slices of leftover cake to place under their pillow, hoping to dream of their future mate; instead, the guests… ate the whole cake and then had dreams of eating it again. After this wedding unmarried women woke in the night with tears in their eyes, not because they were alone, but because there wasn’t any cake left.”

Reading this book felt like wrapping myself in a warm blanket on a misty, autumn day. The writing was beautiful. The characters were magical. The entire book felt like something you could sink into. This tale was not just made, it was threaded and crafted. I feel like it has burrowed inside of me.

Buy this dream-like book here: The strange and beautiful sorrows of Ava Lavender

The Dovekeepers

“They say that a woman who practices magic is a witch, and that every witch derives her power from the earth. There was a great seer who advised that, should a man hold a witch in the air, he could then cut off her powers, thereby making her helpless. But such an attempt would have no effect on me. My strength came from water, my talents buoyed by the river. On the day I swam in the Nile and saw my fate in the ink blue depths, my mother told me that I would have powers of my own, as she did. But there was a warning she gave me as well: If I were ever to journey too far from the water, I would lose my power and my life. I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what is what causes women to drown.”

This is a historical-saga fictional novel with slices of magical realism woven softly into the narrative like silk. This book has been called Alice Hoffman’s masterpiece, her most ambitious and mesmerizing writing, and I surely agree. This is the richly told story of four strong and mysterious women from diverse paths who find themselves drawn together as sacred dovekeepers for the 900 Jews who held off the fierce Roman army for months in the Judean desert at the mountain fortress Masada. Hoffman explores themes on ancient magick, sexuality, freedom, gender, love, eroticism, daily life, family, war, childbirth, landscape, historical facts and much more all within this epic tombe!

Each word, each sentence and each paragraph felt precious and personal as though reading a diary. All 4 women had beautifully strong personalities and stories that interlinked with each other and it was such a breath of fresh air reading a novel where the secondary characters were male which allowed the female characters the opportunity to tell their tale and be deep and complex beings in their own right- love and relationships was a strong theme in the book but each woman had other important tasks to concentrate on than centering their livelihood around the men in their lives.

Seductive. captivating. factual and thick like desert air. This story is gorgeous.

Buy the book here: The Dovekeepers
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When I was about six years old I began to write poetry, it was also around that age I discovered my gift for drawing.
I was quite an inquisitive child and at such a young age I had the eyes and imagination of an old soul where I’d sit for hours questioning the meaning of life, worlds beyond our own and realms within our own that we can not see. I’d sit in nature contemplating whether there were portals leaking out of plants and whether stones held prayers inside them. I’ve sadly only managed to keep one poem from my younger years, all others have vanished- probably thrown away by my mother. The poem I wrote at age 12 was about death being a form of eternal dreaming, where I believed after we see the light our soul is sent to a place of colour, an ocean of emotions painted on our skin to form new bodies in preparation for another life, yes I wrote that kind of existential poem at 12 years old!!! In my later teens I wrote a short prose poem about a girl who possessed the ability to grow flowers from her feet everywhere she walked, thus creating a dense magical garden around her that loved her too much it became poisonous with jealousy if anyone attempted to love her.
At 22, during a time when I was very poor I could not even afford art materials and after a very turbulent relationship, I think I went slightly mad not having access to things to help me express how I felt and all these words dripped from my lips and onto scrap paper, that was a collection of very dark poetry which I turned into a very badly made pamphlet called “Fragments of Light” which I am currently reediting to add to an illustrated poetry collection, yet to be given a title, it’s a very slow work in progress that I hope to actually have published as it’s a dream of mine to publish a book.

That being said, it’s a bit obvious I love poetry! Especially prose poetry that plays with the mystical in the mundane or the wicked in the divine. So here are 8 favourite obscure poetry books I highly recommend.

Cure All by Kim Parko

These collections of poetry are fabulously strange and surreal. Parko’s world in Cure All is populated and narrated by–on the whole–non-human actors, including animals, vegetation, and machinery. To call these pieces unique isn’t enough. With her fractured shards of advice, sweet little nightmares, tunneled eyes and sprouted scales, Kim Parko presents a twisting puzzle of fire blights and lonely spines.

This book is about language and sadness, oftentimes the sadness of language. The words are roads to impossible destinations, a thousand detours in only a fraction of that many pages.

The surreal images in this captivating book transport you to a dream-like world that is totally unique and mind-bending. This is a highly original work that is both beautiful and frightening.

Buy it here: Cure All by Kim Parko

A New Language for Falling out of Love by Meghan Privitello

Privitello’s prose poems are edgy; they are embodied and dripping with viscera; they are weird; they will cut you. These poems are not precious or saccharine (though they are beautiful!)–they are electric with dark humor and bodies that bite. Each line in Privitello’s poems is surprising: rather than presenting a linear narrative, the poems meander from one startling image to the next.  Reading this book felt like wandering inside a museum of Victorian oddities and noir grotesqueries.

These are really dense and thickly wild poems that will haunt and tantalize your mind. From the start, the reader is taken on a journey of “what ifs” as Privitello shows us that there are things to be learned from meditating on the hypothetical and allowing it to seep into the real world.

A New Language For Falling Out of Love’s enchanting prose assures readers that not only are we possible, but anything is possible. Privitello reminds us that it is okay to ache with desire, it is okay to ask ourselves “What if I ache?”

Buy it here: A new Language for falling out of Love

Why God is a Woman by Nin Andrews

Why God Is a Woman is a collection of poems written about a magical island where women rule and men are the second sex. Nin Andrews creates a world both fantastic and familiar where all the myths, logic, and institutions support the dominance of women.

This collection of prose poetry makes you think deeply about gender issues and what it might be like in a matriarchal society. The universe within this book is what sexist men think will happen with the world if feminism starts to work. it’s their worst nightmare.

As Women rule on the island where our unnamed male narrator grew up; men are the subservient, objectified sex. Frankly, I didn’t think the familiar device of gender switching would be that powerful for me, but it was. These prose poems look at what it means to live in fear of bodily harm and to understand that your appearance is your primary source of worth. And Andrews also explores how myth and storytelling teach us our place in the world. This is an accessible, elegant, thought-provoking collection.

Buy it here: Why God is a Woman

Changing by Lily Hoang

Changing is a Little Girl’s fate, and in CHANGING she finds an unsettling, beautiful home. Like a topsy-turvy horoscope writer, Hoang weaves a modern novella into the classical form of the I Ching. In glassine sentences, fragmented and new, Jack and Jill fall down the hill over and over again in intricate and ancient patterns.

Changing by Lily Hoang brings the reader not only a story but also an experience. You must read from the bottom up, and the narrator will reprimand you for not doing so– unless you are. In which case, the narrator apologizes. These little moments of interaction are what made this novel so wonderfully strange for me, along with its writing style and form. If you feel the need to break away from the traditional, this is for you.

Created to be read as fragments to be broken up and pieced together as though pulling parts of a riddle out of hat, Hoang explores the possibility of fate depending on which prose you read first and what comes next? You really have to let yourself go when reading this and then let it wash over you. A truly magnificent, experimental piece of writing.

Buy it here: Changing by Lily Hoang

The Exhibit (Chapbook) by Lauren Eggert-Crowe

Dark, muddy and rolls off the tongue like silk. Here is a collection of ekphrastic prose poems in which the speaker wanders through bizarre art exhibits that seem to undulate through the pages and come alive as living beings in your mindscape . Part lucid dreaming, instruction manual and part breakup in a haunted museum.

Another surreal book of poetry that speaks a bizarre yet undeniably beautiful language, This isn’t a straightforward book of prose poems, and I like that about it; there’s a lot of space in here to find your own meanings, to imagine, to roll about and come to an understanding.

The images that the poems bring to my head were so haunting and strange, and sometimes ghostly and mysterious, sometimes eerie but there’s definitely something powerful and moving about them. I pause a little after each poem, maybe reread some lines or the entire poem to immerse myself in those images.

Buy it here at Hyacinth Girl Press: The Exhibit

Apocrypha by Catherynne M. Valente

This is Catherynne M. Valente’s first full-length poetry collection, where freaks, emperors, bodhisattvas, beasts, witches, wicked stepmothers, Greek heroes, are told seductively and wickedly in poem and prose.

mesmerizing and frightening at times her writing is full of obscene and beautiful imagery described lushly and at times presented abruptly, certain passages made me gasp delightfully with a naughty smile. Valente was able to merge ancient and present times together, weaving the primordial with the modern to create homage to old fairytales, myths and legends.

These poems are all quite wrapped up with women, their perspective, fears, and angers. All were centered on myths, most notably from Japan and Greece, as well as not so pleasant versions of classic Western fairytales. Valente knows her myth and literature. A truly a unique and gorgeous collection of raw, wonderful stories.

Buy it here: Apocrypha by Catherynne Valente

Dream Animals (Pamphlet) Alyson Miller

This is a collection of grotesque little poems that reexamine fairy tales and mixes them with horror, dreams and violence. It is a really peculiar little book  that I carried everywhere with me and it is now very dog eared and tea stained.

I love Alyson Miller’s use of weird language that seeps in between mundane reality, where lost shoes brings a state of sadness, dream babies and a chalk- white girl roam like ghosts in this world. Where the sound of Cicadas sound like teeth chattering over metal spoons and a moon-faced boy cries at a muted T.V.

This is magical realism at its finest, the reader navigates through the poems to figure out where the bizarre ends and reality begins. This haunting collection is like a dream journal of Alyson’s lucid dreams and nightmares. Beautifully terrifying to read.

Buy it here at Dancing Girl Press: Dream Animals

Divinity School by Alicia Jo Rabins

A wide-ranging exploration of spirituality, sex, travel, food, holy texts, and coming of age, DIVINITY SCHOOL combines a searing eye for surreal beauty in everyday life with a deep knowledge of wisdom literature.

Divinity school serves as an instruction manual to uncover the mysticism of fragmented, passing moments and discover the sensual and sacred of ourselves. Sailing involves removing curses and traveling time; cross-country skiing is witnessing “a moon silence,” where the skier is urged to “read the snow while it scrolls across the hills . . . it’s in the static.” Outdoor recreation is access into spiritual Nature.

Rabins crossed boundaries between physical and metaphysical realms, implying anyone or anything can be holy or become a prophet. A make-up artist teaches the secrets of beauty to mystics, a frozen water-fall becomes the centre of a man, a security guard attributes the power of a watcher- like the watchful eyes of God. The poetry dissects every day life and imbues it with the power of ritual and ceremony. These passages are watery, tidal and elusive bringing you closer to the divine through nature and slip stream words.

Buy it here: Divinity School

I hope this collection inspires you? Are there any you are drawn to? What poetry books would you recommend?

I’ve also written book reviews for Yogi Approved click, on the links below:

Six Soulful books for the summer

Five books for the Winter reading list

Five books for your Fall reading list

And Bad Yogi:
8 Poetry books to inspire your yoga practice

Here are some other book reviews published on the blog:
Book Haul: Empowering books for Wild women
Book review of Plum by Hollie McNish
Book review of The Girl of Ink & Stars by Kiran Millwod-Hargrave
Book Haul: Picture books for little Yogis & ESL Learners
Review of The Rialto Poetry Magazine
Review of Candlestick Press Poetry Pamphlets
Book Review of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops By Jen Campbell
Book Review of Love poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky
Book Review on Kinfolk Magazine issues 11 & 12
Beautiful children’s books part one
Book Review on the children’s picture book ABC Dream by Kim Krans
Book Haul on Art Therapy Books
Book Haul on more Art Therapy Books

I love to read and I read numerous books of many topics, I don’t have a particular genre I stick to. Right now I am reading a couple of poetry books, a magical realist novel, a book on the chakras, another on Thai Yoga and another about the teenage brain (for my teen yoga teacher training.) Sometimes I want to read a book that has a beautiful fusion of female empowerment, fairytale symbolism and Jungian psychology. These types of books help me reflect on myself, learn more about who I am and I discover a lot of my strengths and weaknesses have been dripped into my psyche via family and societal environments. Reading books about becoming the sacred feminine who sees her beauty and accepts her darkness is extremely medicinal stuff because it unleashes archetypes in me that may have been dormant and encourages me to be proud of traits already being wild and free. Here are five of my favourite Empowering books for women who delight in being wild and for those who feel constrained and wish to be set free and roar with fervor.

Burning Woman

Fiery. Passionate. Honest. Complex. I feel like it made a space to honor and acknowledge women’s anger in a way that is so often overlooked, ignored, minimized, suppressed, or denied (just like women’s voices around the world today and in history). This book is alive with language piercing right through the heart into the womb and is a must read for any woman at any age on any pathway. This is a call to the true Feminine and unconditional love. This is also a great source book if you run a sacred feminine circle or Red Tent because it honours the lost voice of the goddess from within. Lucy’s writing style is very personal, from her heart to the readers: embodied. It feels very different to read from traditional non-fiction and even contemporary narrative non-fiction authors, it is uncultivated, raw and wild and it reads very much like a personal journey.

Burning Women is the Feminine as an archetype (not a prescribed gender) are rising in the form of intersectional feminists, queer activists and angry people of colour. We are the rule breakers and we demand that our voices be heard. And as we get stronger, so the forces which suppressed us wage an ever more fierce war. But they cannot stop us. The tools which have been used to oppress us are being revealed within concepts like rape culture and patriarchy. Burning Woman screams through the flames “enough is enough”! This is  truly powerful book that gets under the skin of what it is to be a strong, powerful female in a man’s world. Brilliant insight and fascinating unique ideas. Exciting writing for a generation of women who want to blaze through life.

Purchase the book here: Burning Woman

Women who Run with the Wolves

I have read this book twice now and it never gets old. It’s dog eared,full of scribbles and I’ve underlined parts I found most important, most relevant to how I feel. Clarissa Pinkola mixes Jungian psychology with folkloric tales and feminist ideas. This is a collection of short stories from around the world interspersed with commentary by the author who discusses how the symbolism is important for women needing to cultivate their wild hearts once again and to be unafraid of her flaws and her darkness and i don’t mean darkness in an evil sense, I mean darkness like the roots of the earth, that primal energy, the dark pelt of a wolf’s coat as she howls at the moon in the dark sky- this book is like Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero’s Journey’ for women desiring to venture back to her primordial self in the cimmerian woods. Any woman who is interested in empowering herself, thus setting herself free from the corsets of social expectations will be inspired. It is a Jungian read on the darkest version of popular folk tales and fairy tales. for me, that made it very accessible.

Some chapters resonated deeply, others not so much – I think it would be different for each individual reader, my favourite chapter was ‘Seal Skin, Soul Skin’ which was about a Selkie woman trapped in a 7 year marriage because her husband hid her seal skin. Relating to this to real life- many women feel trapped in relationships, specifically abusive ones and they feel that their soul or their identity has been stolen, Clarissa interprets this story beautifully. Juicy and satisfying, this book is for any woman who feels an urge to connect with wild and ancient concepts of what it means to be female: messy, raw, and full of luminously passionate creative energy. If this book doesn’t make you want to howl out loud, I’m not sure what will!

You can purchase the book here: Women who Run with the Wolves

If Women rose Rooted

If Women Rose Rooted is very similar to Women who Run with the Wolves, so if you enjoyed that then you will love this. This book is all about connecting with the Earth and with the Celtic heritage. It weaves personal stories, Celtic myths, and meetings with other like-minded people together like roots of an ancient wise tree. This is an incredibly deep and thought provoking book for women as it maps out an intensely passionate journey following a woman’s search for her place to be and belong, both physically and mentally. Sharon digs deeply into her Celtic heritage and it’s mythology, finding women’s roles as leaders and protectors, feeling the deep rooted emotions of belonging to land and community. I thoroughly enjoyed this book because of my proud Celtic heritage, my Grandmother on my mother’s side is Irish and my Grandfather on my Father’s side is Scottish and our name ‘Ness’ is an ancient Pictish/Norwegian name meaning “Cliff” or “Headland”. I am very in tune with my Celtic blood so reading this book was like coming home to my ancient self.

I found the parts of the book relating to Celtic history and the actual stories compelling, the women introduced by the author fascinating and the prose and poetry just beautiful. I found this book to be both mesmerizing and thought provoking. The combination of genres explores the world we live in and takes us along on the Heroine’s journey to re-explore our own lives and ourselves. Every woman needs to read this book. It will speak to your soul, it will stir up your long forgotten ancestral wisdom. It will have you connecting with instincts you didn’t realize were divine, or it cements the notion that you are on the right path to know the goddess.

You can purchase the book here: If Women Rose Rooted

Woman most Wild

This is a brilliantly wonderful, empowering book. Danielle has a wonderful, poetic writing style that feels rich and velvety while still infused with empowerment and energy. Now more than ever, we all need to embrace our inner feminine power (no matter where you find yourself gender-wise) and this book goes in depth on how to do just that. From start to finish of this book my eyes were glued to the magically empowering words Danielle Dulsky surged through my eyes. It’s pages shared with my soul, a witch I had forgotten was within me. I cried tears of release, had deep belly laughs throughout while finding the key to unlock my inner witchy woman. From reading “Woman most wild,” I realized I had really become isolated from nature’s magick, and I’ve already started wandering back out to the forest to find my Mother tree.  Here is a celebration of the sacred feminine – The definitive word on what it means to embody, become, move, and breathe the goddess within. The author acts as a guide for teaching others how to live with the rhythms of the seasons of Mother Earth. She offers ritual, chants and practices to honor the seasons that serve our beautiful and bountiful bodies, throughout our life span.

This book actually howls as you eat of its delicious powerful medicinal words. It is an enchanting journey into the realm of the sacred divine feminine, It is incredibly diverse and serves as a great tool for awakening and healing the collective wound by channeling your inner power and remembering what we were taught to forget.  A real Gem from an author who delivers like wild thunder and water.This book is life transforming and has awakened a fire inside me that will now never quiet.

You can purchase the book here: Woman most Wild

Goddesses in every Woman

According to Bolen, the stories behind these goddesses (which she recaps in the book) have seeped into the collective unconscious and mold women’s personalities from birth. She’s separated them into three groups- ‘virgin goddesses’ (representing the independent, self-sufficient quality in women), vulnerable goddesses (representing relationship-oriented women), and Alchemical, or transformative. Interestingly, only Aphrodite’s in the last category as she is both virginal (indpendant from men) and vulnerable (loves being in love). It is believed that most women are a blend of the goddesses, or ‘adopt’ different goddesses at different stages of their lives. I discovered I am a blend of Artemis (a free spirit with ambition), Aphrodite (I love all the sensual delights of life) and a little bit of Persephone (connected to mystical things). Bolen describes what typical childhood, adolescence, and adult years are like for each goddess, and lists the strengths and weakness for each archetype, so one can become more self-aware and take steps to remedy what’s not working and strengthen what is.

Archetypes are a powerful tool for self-knowledge because they tap into the universal collective language we all share. Learning to become more aware of your own archetypes can help you see yourself, the bigger picture and is a good place to start creating solutions for yourself and others. Finding out which Goddess sits at the head of your table is also a very good way to balance your own personality so you are able to find a voice for lesser known parts (Goddesses) of your inner self. I high recommend this book in every woman’s collection for insight into strengths and weaknesses and personal empowerment.

You can purchase the book here: Goddesses in every Woman

These books are deliciously jam-packed with empowering goodness that will enrich your soul and fill your heart with fervor. Happy Reading!

If you fancy reading other book reviews by yours truly, click on the links below:

Yogi Approved Book reviews:
Six Soulful books for the summer

Five books for the Winter reading list

Five books for your Fall reading list

Bad Yogi Magazine Book reviews:
8 Poetry books for Yogis

4 Books by Inspiring Yoga Teachers

Book reviews of a similar topic on the blog:
Quotes I like from The Book of Dharma by Simon Haas
Book review of Alchemy of the Heart by Elizabeth Prophet
Book Review of Shamanic way of the Bee by Simon Buxton
Book Review of Love poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky
Book Review of Yoga for Travelers by Jennifer Ellinghaes
Book review on yoga books (miscellaneous)
Book Haul on Art Therapy Books
Book Haul on more Art Therapy Books

Want me to review your book? Contact me via my contact page to discuss sending me a review copy.
Please note that I do not accept self-published books or e-books for review.