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Wendy B. Paris. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Nashville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt University Press. 2004. xi + 323 pages. $59.95 ($34.95 paper). ISBN 0-8265-1441-3 (1442-1 paper)
WHEREAS MOST CRITICS have sought to distinguish magical realism from surrealism, the fantastic, and Alejo Carpentier's Io real maravilloso (the marvelous real), Wendy Faris's Ordinary Enchantments is unique in that she equates these very different tendencies with each other as well as with postmodern, postcolonial, and feminist literatures, which are then contrasted with nineteenth-century "canonical patrilineal" realism. Paris labels her approach as inclusive in opposition to the exclusive approach of other critics. Some examples of her inclusiveness: Paris states that "magical realism in the West develops from a combination of realism and surrealism, often with an infusion of pre-Enlightenment or indigenous culture"; the Odyssey and the Inferno, as well as earlynineteenth-century supernaturalism, may be considered as "precursors of magical realism"; a comparison of magical realism and twentieth-century shamanism...