Episode 87: The Enchanted World of Graham Joyce

“The Enchanted World.” Mixed media on canvas. Barbara Fisher 2022. This painting has four elements in it, all of them related to one of the Graham Joyce novels we discussed in this episode. From top right, clockwise, the black bird is from Dark Sister, The skull is from The Facts of Life, the hare is from The Limits of Enchantment and the English bluebells are from Some Kind of Fairy Tale.

It’s Book Nerd time again! Yay!

This time around, Morganna and I are going to talk about one of our favorite authors in the fantasy/literary fiction genre, Graham Joyce.

He was born and raised and lived in the Midlands of England that great swath of industrial cities, medieval towns, countryside and farms that it seems a great many Americans don’t know a lot about.

American readers don’t seem to know much about Graham Joyce’s work, either, but he was an award-winning author, and he had such a deft touch when writing about The Other, that I find it hard to describe. Except to say that his way of writing the supernatural or the paranormal is very akin to the way that Morganna and I both experience The Other.

All of his books are set in the Midlands, and the way he writes, the setting seems fairly normal, somewhat boring even, but just under the surface of the suburbs, or the bombed out city of Coventry, Enchantment lurks, waiting. And then it slips into view, and you’re left with a tingle of excitement, and then it slips away again.

And then it’s back, mercurial and brazen until it dives back into the shadows.

We highlight four books in our episode, because these are the ones we’ve read the most times. The others are also excellent, but we didn’t want to bore you by talking for three or more hours.

We start with the one most likely for Americans to have read: Some Kind of Fairy. Tale This one is a take on the Changeling motif, answering the question, “What happens when the stolen child returns home?”

We also examine Dark Sister, which is a tale of traditional witchcraft and how the murder of women in the past affects women in the present.

The third novel we look into is The Limits of Enchantment, where we look at how the practice of midwifery changed in the 1960’s in England, and how in some cases, but not all, the older ways were better,

And finally, the fourth novel, and our very favorite, is The Facts of Life. It’s about a large family of seven young women and their mother and how they raise the illegitimate son of the youngest daughter in post WWII Coventry.

I know, the descriptions don’t sound weird or wonderful in the least, but listen to the episode and you will understand where the magic and The Other come into the equation.

Hope you enjoy it!