a review by Nalini Haynes
This novel has been sitting in my TBR pile waving hello while I’ve been reading for interviews and all over the place. I enjoy fairy tales so it’s rather perplexing that I’ve delayed reading this book. But I’ve been feeling like a hamster in a wheel (thanks for the analogy, Chasers).
In the beginning
Some Kind of Fairy tale opens on Christmas Day with Mary and Dell, a middle aged to elderly couple, sitting down to Christmas dinner together. There is a fragility to the domestic scene. They are papering over some deep sorrow. Where are the children? There is a knock on the door. Upon answering it, a young woman addresses Dell as ‘Dad’. He doesn’t recognise her. Mary followed Dell to the door. She recognised the young woman and promptly fainted.
Peter, his wife and children, have eaten Christmas dinner and are recovering from the mayhem of such an event with 4 children and two dogs running amok. The phone rings. Mary and Dell, his parents, summon him to this impromptu family reunion. His anger bubbles to the surface. Tara, Peter’s younger sister, went missing twenty years ago and is presumed dead.
What follows is an exploration of the lives of this family, Tara’s former boyfriend Ritchie, Mrs Larwood the neighbor and Vivian Underwood the psychiatrist, who become entwined in this narrative. Tara’s return ripples through their lives as they respond to her unexpected return.
The pacing and the style of storytelling is more akin to contemporary fiction than fantasy. Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a little along the lines of Diane Blacklock and Marian Keyes without the domesticity or prevailing feminine viewpoint, and a much shorter read.
Psychiatry in the face of fairies
Joyce begins his tale with the trope of the young woman abducted by fairies who then returns to her family, a person out of time.
Vivian Underwood, the psychiatrist, unpacks this trope, commenting on Tara’s knowledge of mythology and her deviations from classical fairy tale themes, bringing considerable depth to the narrative. Underwood also casts doubt on the veracity of Tara’s story.
Underwood and Geraldine – Peter’s wife who is a trained psychologist – raise alternative explanations from a mental health perspective while engaging in partisan warfare in person and via proxy. Joyce clearly understands the factions and frictions in the mental health field.
It’s always the boyfriend – or is it?
Ritchie, Tara’s former boyfriend, was a suspect in Tara’s disappearance and presumed murder. In an effort to avoid spoilers, I’ll restrict myself to two key points. Firstly that the Joyce’s exploration of Ritchie’s experiences added realism to this tale.
Secondly, as I read Fairy Tale I recalled vividly the recent news reports implying – and comments on social media assuming – that Jill Meagher’s husband was a suspect in her disappearance. Because ‘everyone knows’ that it’s usually the husband or boyfriend. And ‘everyone knows’ that ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ means you’ve been pulled in for questioning as a suspect. This gentle story contrasts people’s assumptions with the suspect’s experience.
Points of view
Largely told in the third person from specific characters’ points of view, this narrative changes to first person periodically. The first time this occurred was so far into the book I was jolted out of reading for a moment. There are a number of first person points of view, [spoiler] then the final chapter specifically mentions that someone (the third person) is writing this narrative but it doesn’t mention whom. This creates a dissonance between the third person and the first person points of view. [spoiler ends]
Usually switches in first person point of view annoy me unless headings indicate the designated character as I spend paragraphs – or even a page or two – trying to figure out who is talking.
When the story includes flashbacks it also takes time to figure out when this scene is set. Once I’ve figured that out, then I usually go back and reread that portion to follow the narrative. However, Joyce wrote each character so well that either the quote prefacing each chapter indicated who speaks or the first sentence or two of the chapter reveals their identity. Joyce used the characters’ focus and language to achieve this.
The psychiatrist, for example, focused on his concern for Tara as Tara’s mental health professional. Meanwhile, his ‘speech patterns’ in the written narrative are also substantially different to the other first person point of view voices. I am in awe of Joyce’s ability to assume varied voices in his narrative.
Varied points of view are particularly appealing in a narrative as the blind men with the elephant accurately describe the whole elephant when their dialogue is combined. I love the unfolding of varied and disparate points of view carefully weaving a tapestry as Joyce has achieved so well here.
The wrap
This story is paced like contemporary fiction although it is a fantasy novel. As such I see it akin to a (much shorter) version of Kate Forsyth’s Bitter Greens and not unlike Kate Elliott‘s Spirit Walker series. I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend Some Kind of Fairy Tale.
NOTES: There is mention of sex including ‘fucking on the kitchen table’ but there aren’t explicit scenes that dwell on the sexual act. It is obvious that Tara has a same-sex attraction to a nude woman, described in some detail.
