Historical Fictionistas discussion

Our June read is The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia. Please remember to mark spoilers. Happy reading.

Finished it a couple of days ago so I look forward to discussion. I rated it four stars.

Is this book magical realism? Edit - nevermind, it's one of the top shelves on the book page (had I thought to look first. lol).

I think I'll pass on this one. MR isn't really my jam.

I often think “magical realism” is a misnomer and a problematic term. It presupposes a relationship with the unknown or misunderstood that is culture-specific.

Example: I recently read a book by Isabel Allende set in Haiti that was labeled magical realism, when the only nonrational bits were the professed beliefs (and actions based on those beliefs) of those who practiced Vodoun. But those beliefs and actions were entirely rational and well motivated by the system of faith embraced by those characters. If the reader had grown up with those beliefs, then a different system of belief (such as one that involved resurrection or an individual taking on the sins of the world or snails cooling the head of a mystic while he meditated) would be seen as magical realism. Your view depends on your starting point. So to me “magical realism” tends to be a colonialist label.

All that said, there are a few characters in this book who have behaviors or perceptions that don’t fit current norms of rationality. The way I read it, what mattered was how others chose to behave toward them. I don’t know whether that helps or makes you more inclined to avoid this book!

I read this and really didn't care for it.

Abigail wrote: "I often think “magical realism” is a misnomer and a problematic term. It presupposes a relationship with the unknown or misunderstood that is culture-specific.

Example: I recently read a book by Isabel Allende set in Haiti that was labeled magical realism, when the only nonrational bits were the professed beliefs (and actions based on those beliefs) of those who practiced Vodoun. But those beliefs and actions were entirely rational and well motivated by the system of faith embraced by those characters. If the reader had grown up with those beliefs, then a different system of belief (such as one that involved resurrection or an individual taking on the sins of the world or snails cooling the head of a mystic while he meditated) would be seen as magical realism. Your view depends on your starting point. So to me “magical realism” tends to be a colonialist label."

Interesting perspective, Abigail. What would you call it instead?

I had never thought about magical realism that way at all, and never thought of it in terms of any particular culture or belief system at all. I'm curious whether your comment is because of THIS particular book, which (now that I've just read the description) features Mexican superstition, or if you can explain it more in terms of the genre, or subgenre. There are many different types and styles of magical realism.

Clarifying my comment - I generally tend to avoid "magical realism" because I tend to associate it with confusing writing/storytelling and surreal/whimsical/anything goes/shifting timelines/perspectives etc sorts of stories, which I don't like. The Night Circus is a perfect example of this to me.

Another example is Beloved by Toni Morrison. I very much disliked it because of the writing and style and I found it confusing and hard to follow, and that ruined the book for me. For YEARS I have hated this book, and yet, I read widely on the very topics within it. This one, to this day, is a point of regret for me, because I want to LIKE it because of the cultural and social importance, but I couldn't get past the writing to get there. Maybe one day I will revisit it.

I've read The House of the Spirits by Allende, and enjoyed that one, and reading back through my review, said this (about Beloved): "I would probably have never picked up this book on my own, but a friend chose it as her book in a chain-swap, so I read it. And I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Like Beloved, this book deals with some very heavy subject matter, but unlike Beloved, this book actually made sense.

True, there was some surreal and mystical and odd moments, but those moments didn't get in the way of the main story of family and country. These moments enhanced it, creating interesting and unique and eccentric characters that I didn't always like, but certainly understood. The surreal and the mystical and the odd were portrayed as everyday, and interpretable as one chooses - to believe them as fact, or to believe them as figments of the imagination of the characters, or to not believe them at all. This is apparently how I like my magical realism. The "who am I? where am I? when am I? is this real? is this memory? is this dream? is this prediction? etc" style of Beloved? Not so much, although it is also interpretable, but in vastly different ways. Beloved forces you to interpret, while The House of the Spirits allows you to take the story at face value if you choose."

So for me, it's not the beliefs or the culture or the "otherness" that I think might be underlying your comment - it's the writing. I WANT to read about those things (and do), but I don't think my brain is compatible with certain styles of writing that are often present in "magical realism".

KarenK2 wrote: "I read this and really didn't care for it."

Hi Karen - can you elaborate on what you didn't like about it? Feel free to use spoiler tags if you want to discuss specifics. :)

Interesting, Becky, we all have certain novelistic tactics that annoy us! For me it’s jumping around in time, especially when combined with multiple characters’ points of view, which seems almost mandatory for historical fiction these days. Sounds like we may share that distaste!

I think my concern with the term magical realism is indeed the cultural thing, that it’s so often used thoughtlessly to “otherize” the worldviews of certain people. For me it’s less a problem on the author’s part—though it’s sometimes that—and more a heedless genre categorization problem that plagues the publishing industry. I don’t mind magic in my stories if it’s there for a reason, but I hate having it used just as a plot convenience, which is of course entirely the author’s fault. (When we were reading The Lost Apothecary, for instance, I criticized it for (view spoiler)[introducing a magical element near the end just to create a dramatic resolution for the plot. (hide spoiler)]) Since we’re reading historical fiction, I rather expect different and often less “Age of Reason”ish perspectives to be inherent in the storylines. I love a book that makes those unfamiliar perspectives make sense to me!

As for the current book, (view spoiler)[it does jump around in time and in characters’ heads a lot, especially at the beginning, in ways that frustrated me, and it wasn’t till I was at least 80 pages in that I came to care about certain characters enough to forgive it. (hide spoiler)] So you’re probably wise to avoid it! Though for me, the human story eventually became more important than the somewhat annoying narrative tactics, so I’m glad I stuck with it.

Abigail - regarding your spoiler for this book, are those things "blurry" and kind of seamlessly shift, or are they called out in some way? I'm definitely OK with those if they are clear, and sometimes even if they aren't... but if the narrative shifts constantly, AND I'm not sure what is real vs not/magic vs "real", then it doesn't work for me.

As a comparison, JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy had a constantly shifting POV style, and I had no trouble following that (loved it in fact), but when unreality is in the mix, it just doesn't really seem to work for me in a lot of cases, so I tend to steer clear.

I may go ahead and give this a try. It's free on Kindle Unlimited, so it wouldn't cost me anything but time to give it a shot. :)

Regarding the shifts: (view spoiler)[They are shifts in time frame and character perspective but not really about what is real and not real, and they are put in separate chapters. Part of the issue from me was that the frame narrator, the one looking back from more or less the present, was in the first person and not named for a very long time. Once I figured out who it was, I got oriented, whereas at first I was baffled by different generations of characters and where they fitted in. Most the chapters were third-person narratives from different people’s points of view, and as the story picked up steam the POV shifted much less. The real vs. not-real was more a matter of a few characters having unusual sensory capabilities, which was accepted by some of the actors in the story as their normal and demonized by other characters. (hide spoiler)]

Ahhh, OK - thank you for clarifying. :D

I went ahead and snagged it via KU, and that comes with audio as well, doubling the chances of my actually getting to it.

I'll try to start it soon, and then I look forward to discussing in more depth. :)

I started this and I'm a few chapters in. I am doing the audio, and the different POVs are narrated by different readers, so it's quite easy to follow so far.

That would help!

For sure! :)

So in the opening of the book a newborn infant is found covered in bees. At first I thought, “Too weird,” and then I thought the bees might be attracted by the bodily fluids on the little body. What do others think?

Loved it.

Very interesting I had not thought of that

I thought that perhaps the bees symbolized new life and hope.
Protection too.

I wasn't thinking much about the symbolic level at that point in the story, but what you say makes sense. They certainly seemed like the life force of La Amistad.

I’m not sure about this audio. I don’t care for the female reader’s style or voice, though the man’s is lovely. I’m thinking I might listen to his chapters and read hers. Too bad it seems to be primarily hers so far.

Abigail, I don’t think there’s a “mundane” reason for the bees. I’m not sure yet what they represent or mean, but I don’t thing they are simply attracted to fluids, etc.

Also, I was thinking about our conversation regarding magical realism and I realized that my “confusing writing” thing maybe isn’t entirely accurate, after all. I was reminded today of a book I LOVED, which was confusing and shifty and messy and all if the things I said I don’t enjoy… but I did enjoy them, and I DO enjoy them… in psychological thrillers. So now I’m wondering if I do just have a negative association with “magical realism” because of a negative experience or is it the magical or whimsical sort of fantasy that combines with the style doesn’t work for me? I’m not sure! I’ve read some I enjoy, some I didn’t. Maybe I’m just being unfair.

I am enjoying this book so far.

You guys have me very excited to read this, especially since unlike Becky I LOVE magical realism. Isabel Allende got me hooked in high school and since then I've always enjoyed that feeling of being on the edge of reality without actually launching into a fantasy read.

Also thanks for the heads up on the audio. I tend to do my books on audio so I'm happy to know I might also want to grab the hardback of this one.

Glad you’re enjoying it, Becky! And I wouldn’t worry about being consistent in your genre likes and dislikes; there’s so much that goes into the texture of a story, and some of it we attach to and other parts we don’t. My mother hated any book that included God, and think how much she missed by having that bias! As Walt Whitman says, “You tell me that I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself: I am large; I contain multitudes.”

That's true, Abigail. As The Doors said: People are strange. ;)

I don't know that I'm so much worried about consistency as in trying to figure out my own brain and preferences.

Your comments about magical realism got me to thinking about it, and I've had such a kneejerk "NOPE" reaction to magical realism for so long... but maybe some of the books that I really love have been or could be considered that, and I need to readjust my thought process about it. What is it about those aspects that I like VERY MUCH in some books, and cannot stand in others? What's the difference?

The book I was reminded of was I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and that, in turn, reminded me of In the House in the Dark of the Woods, which I read back to back and both of which I loved. Also, a third I just thought of is A Head Full of Ghosts.

All of them have some aspect of "unreality", but the way it was presented worked for me. Thinking back on them, I think it's the nature of the question of what is real vs not, and what it is that causes me to question that. I think it comes down to the perspective, and more specifically, the perspective of an unreliable (or untrustworthy in some cases) narrator. Of those books, only "In The House..." is shelved as "magical realism" at all, though none are PRIMARILY shelved that way.

So I now wonder if it's more to do with the expectations of the primary genre (thriller, historical fiction, and horror respectively) that makes the difference? Some things are allowed in horror or a thriller, but if it's in a HF book, it's allowed to be called "magical realism"?

I would also just like to say here that I am notoriously bad at genre categorization, and usually don't think about it much at all, so... take all of my ramblings with a grain of salt!

Honestly, I'm gonna have to try Beloved again now. Maybe I'll appreciate it more being older.

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Anyway, back on topic for THIS book, I'm about 10% in now, and still enjoying it. So far, whatever makes this "magical realism" is very subtle.

I'm mostly reading the book now, rather than listening to the audio. (Xe Sands is apparently not a reader for me.)

I am enjoying the pacing of this and even the shifting of the chapter perspectives, though I'm waiting for it to come together. At least they are FULL chapters though. A book I read recently was little snapshot chapters that jumped around all over the place, and didn't make any sense until nearly the end. Thankfully, I'm not getting that feeling here. I think it will start to meld soon.

It does smooth out and the connections become clear after about the first 80 pages.

Everything you said about genre expectations! But I won’t climb back on my hobby horse about how the publishing industry damages books and the reading experience by pigeonholing. . . .

What a wonderful discussion! I agree about pigeonholing books. So many books cross traditional genre lines these days.

I read The Murmur of Bees awhile ago. I’m glad I didn’t let the magical realism label dissuade me. I really enjoyed it!

Agreed! I really enjoy when a book defies expectation, though I like to go into stories with as few preconceived notions as possible, so I generally don't want to know much beyond the primary genre. Sometimes not even that.

Of course now I will be working on that bias, because clearly it is not doing me any service to avoid potentially great books because of a style of storytelling that I had a bad reaction to one time.

I enjoyed this book very much. I do not enjoy fantasy, but have found some that I have liked. With this one I did not let the magical element get in the way, It is a beautifully written story. I would compare it to The House of Spirits and the Shadow of the Wind both I enjoyed.

Oh, The Shadow of the Wind is another one I really enjoyed. I forgot about that one!

I read this a couple of years ago & really loved it. I did have to start it twice (partly because it's on my Kindle & I couldn't easily flip back & forth), but once I got the characters & relationships straight, it moved along fast; especially for such a long book.
I hope people that shy away from magical realism will give it a chance. The historical element is also very interesting & I look to hearing what people think when they finish. The author's note at the end (pretty sure it does contain spoilers, so I would wait to read) explains where he got his idea, who he was writing about, and why the "magical realism" (not sure he calls it that).

I have not been making much progress with this book this week. I was selected for jury duty, so the downtime I USED to have in the evenings is gone as I try to keep up with work after my usual working hours were spent in court. (It's not going all that well. The keeping up thing, I mean.)

So maybe this weekend I will have more time to read. Not sure.

Sooo annoying when life gets in the way of reading!

Yes, exactly, Sarah; that’s why I’m so uncomfortable with the term.

I'm about 19% into this, and honestly I'm getting a little impatient with it.

I had jury duty last week, and every time I would try to read it in any downtime, I immediately lost interest. It just was not holding my focus enough. That is likely unfair, because it was a very distracting environment, but I picked up a different book and didn't have as much of an issue, and over the weekend I tried this one again, and was still not really feeling much for it, either.

I switched back to the audio, thinking that even if I don't like the female reader (and I REALLY don't) at least I would make progress... but I'm just thinking that unless something interesting happens soon, I'm just gonna drop it and move on.

Sarah wrote: "Regarding the magical realism, when historical Christian characters believe something, it’s labeled as historical fiction, but when historical characters of other faith backgrounds believe something, it’s labeled as fantasy. That could have to do with why Mexican folk beliefs in this story are called “magical realism.”"

Since this is coming up again, I'll say that I don't think this is borne out by the evidence. I think we should be careful about making assumptions about why books are labeled and marketed (or on GR, shelved) as a particular genre. There's a lot of factors that go into how a book is marketed, why someone chooses to read or not read a book, etc.

If you go to the genre page or shelf page for magical realism, there are books representing a wide spectrum of people and cultures, including Christians. Just off the top of my head, Alice Hoffman, Audrey Niffenegger, and Sarah Addison Allen all write "magical realism", and are all American white women, writing about American white women. Haruki Murakami writes magical realism, and Neil Gaiman, and Erin Morgenstern, and Toni Morrison, and many many others.

Speaking for myself, (and as I have previously said) I have never thought about magical realism in any way related to the culture or beliefs of the characters in the story. For me it has always been more about the style and writing, and whether those work for me or not, than whether the people or cultures presented are "other". In fact, I'm surprised to find some books on this shelf/genre page that I really enjoyed are shelved as "magical realism", but I never thought of them that way simply because the writing didn't feel that way to me, despite having surreal/magical elements to the story (Exit West & The Golem and the Jinni are two examples). It's a MUCH more varied and nuanced genre than I thought.

I am all for examining biases and I will always be here for that conversation, but I don't want anyone to feel like the act of labeling their books with a particular, and popular, genre means something more than just categorization.

Interesting thoughts. I would have classed Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen as fantasy! But you’re right, their books are marketed toward people who tend to like “magical thinking.” I wasn’t pointing fingers at authors, more at marketers in publishing houses who tend to categorize with sales streams in mind more than nuances of content or approach—in my head categorization is more done TO authors than done BY them, unless they are deliberately writing to genre. If I had my druthers there wouldn’t be genres, only books.

Thanks for clarifying Abigail. How I was reading this conversation was as more of an implied reader-shelving bias, but you are right - marketing companies may use the term more for some types of books than others, and maybe it's readers who are assigning it more fairly!

Man, this book is really throwing me! I switched back to the audio (as I mentioned) and now it's a male reader chapter, and it's LOVELY. I really love his voice and style and it's wonderful to listen to him. (Apparently he won an award for this book!)

But then the woman reader comes back and I can't with her. The vocal fry, low tone, and kind of dragged together quality of her style (which others apparently interpret as "intimate") makes me want to scream.

I am around 25% in now, and do I know whether I still want to be reading this? I don't know. I probably will finish the book not knowing. LOL

This was not my type of a book at all. I didn't like the writing style, short choppy chapters. Plot drove me crazy. I did like Simonopio.

We can't love them all

Alice wrote: "This was not my type of a book at all. I didn't like the writing style, short choppy chapters. Plot drove me crazy. I did like Simonopio.

We can't love them all"

I purchased this ages ago but never read it. When it came up as the group read I thought great! Then I went and read the synopsis and first chapter and thought why did I buy this?

I read this in the midst of lockdown and had no idea when I started it that it begins during the 1918 pandemic. I’ve been a huge reader of nonfiction, realistic fiction and historical fiction all my life. I love a good family saga. It’s only recently that I’ve opened up to magical realism, speculative fiction, sci-fi and alternate history.

So many books these days, like The Murmur of Bees, really are difficult to pidgeon-hole because they combine several genres. I loved this book, especially from the middle on. I thought it was a beautifully told family saga combining drama, a historical setting and just mere touches of magical realism.

I enjoyed Sofia Segovia’s writing so much that I recently finished her second book, Tears of Amber, which I thought was excellent. Its totally different - hf about WW 2 refugees based on first hand accounts from the author’s hometown in Mexico.

I'm making progress, finally! I am still doing the audio, and while I still find myself focusing on the female reader's style and voice far more than I ever want to, the story is finally starting to grab me.

I'm now about 30% in, and the drama and conflict is starting to stick its little toes in the water, so I'm looking forward to see where this goes now.

Oh, and on the "magical realism" front, I really love the bees and how they are incorporated into this story and I'm invested in seeing what they mean.

That was my experience too, Becky—I was a bit baffled by all the changes in POV and time line at the start, but then it started to cohere. It becomes much more linear as it goes along.

Maybe we’re far enough along that I can link to my review. I don’t think it has spoilers but some people are more aware of them than others: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

I thought for sure that I would love this book as I tend to like Magical Realism. Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are among my favorite authors. However, this book was a struggle to get through. Although I liked Simonopio a lot, the changing perspectives drove me nuts. I couldn't tell who was narrating half the time.

Maybe something was lost in translation, but frankly, I didn't find the writing to be that great. There wasn't the fluidity and lyricism that I am used to with this type of novel.

Megan wrote: "Maybe something was lost in translation, but frankly, I didn't find the writing to be that great. There wasn't the fluidity and lyricism that I am used to with this type of novel."

I agree. I finished this tonight and though I definitely teared up some in some areas, I think it was more from empathy for what I would imagine anyone would have been feeling in that moment, not necessarily because the writing brought it out. In fact, some of the sections that were absolutely 100% intended to be heartbreaking, making the reader feel the grief and loss and desperation and worry and whatnot of the scene -- I just got impatient with them and was frustrated by the (IMO) ridiculous monologuing dragging them out. The last one of them I skipped. (In the Kindle app, when the accompanying audio is playing while the app is open, it highlights so that you can read along with the audio - and I saw what was coming up and just skipped it entirely.)

I think in these sections, less would definitely have been more for me.

It does not help that the reader I didn't like handled these sections, and PERFORMED them. I rarely enjoy this from audiobook readers. I much prefer them to let the story speak THROUGH them, instead of trying to act it out for me. Sigh.

Anyway, I did end up liking this well enough. The second half was far better than the first, but some things that I wish had been more important to the story were almost afterthoughts, and other things that I thought were entirely superfluous and unnecessary were treated far too importantly.

And, toward the end, I was confused by the narrative shifts (again). Though in a different way. At first, in the beginning, it wasn't really clear that there were two narrators - one omniscient and one first person (though the audio definitely helped in that regard). But toward the end, the "omniscient" narrator shifted to a second person style at times, and seemed to be talking TO the first person narrator. So... who was the omniscient/second person doing the narrating? Very strange.

Though, I will say that this book inspired me to learn about antique Singer sewing machines. So that was cool.

It sounds like the audiobook detracted from instead of promoting enjoyment in this case!

Yes, but I wouldn't say that the it was STRICTLY the audio's fault. I didn't love the female reader at any point, but the (view spoiler)[Francisco death (hide spoiler)] scene was too long, random, rambly and (dare I say it) boring, regardless of whether it was print or audio.

Then the same with (view spoiler)[Beatriz's worry about the missing Francisco Jr (hide spoiler)], which was at least two passages that I can recall.

I get why these were included, but it didn't work for me from a narrative perspective (not just an audio-reader perspective), and I definitely would have appreciated less overt stream-of-consciousness drama and more subtlety. It took away from my ability to empathize in these scenes.

The reader's performance was salt in the papercut. It enhanced the already painful. If that makes sense.

Perfect sense! And I agree that for my taste the author overemphasized some bits and underemphasized others.

Yes. I completely agree. (view spoiler)[ The whole coyote storyline was built up and up and up, and then the resolution was offscreen and told to us in sentence or two. It felt like such a letdown. I really wanted something more from that. (hide spoiler)]

I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, I did enjoy it until the ending took a bit too long. The writing was beautiful, and the author really put you in the setting. I felt the characters were very interesting, with one exception. (view spoiler)[ The Espiricueta character was rather one-dimensional. He had no human traits besides greed and revenge. Not only was his demise anti-climatic after such a long buildup, but it was also not gratifying. He had no final-moment realizations or self-reflections to make him regret his attitudes and violence. He never saw Simonopio as anything other than a demon. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I'm glad I read the book because it is not one I would have typically chosen. I had to give it 3 stars just for the final slog, but I would recommend it to fans of this genre.