Customer Reviews

The Good Fairies of New York

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I ended up having a truly remarkable experience with this book that was almost spiritual. It involved a car, some pain pills, an unknown disease and my mother's voice. I have decided to revel the whole story here, even though it is quite personal so that readers may gain an understanding of exactly how special this book is.

I started reading "The Good Fairies of New York" in the car on the way to school when I had a terrible headache and my mother was running into the pharmacy to get me some pain pills. I loved the first chapter so much that on her return I read it aloud for her, intending to continue on reading by myself. But when I finished and stopped vocalizing the words she protested. "Don't stop there" she said, "this is great!"

So I read on. When we weren't in the car she would read to me. Progress was slow because our schedules conflicted, neither one of us was willing to cheat by going ahead alone and every now and then we would stop to remark on how amazing the book was. Then, sadly but truly, we forgot about the book for a while.

We forgot because I got sick, really sick. Like Kerry, the silvery-blue haired woman determined to make an ancient Celtic flower alphabet and win a community arts prize despite her crone's disease (only that's not what I have.) Confused, in a lot of pain, drugged and scared about what was happening to me we turned back to the book.

This time just my mother read. Whenever I was particularly depressed, or in so much pain I wanted to die or terrified that no one was ever going to figure out what was wrong with me, she would whip out the cheerful orange-cream sunset colored novel and read a chapter or two.

Through the adventures of Heather and Morag, two Scottish thistle fairies who landed in New York after being chased out of Scotland for desecrating sacred clan objects (among other things) and ended up with two humans-Dinny a loud, fat and mean bad fiddle player and Kerry, bent on revenge on her old boyfriend, I laughed. Tulip and Petal, prince and princess of Cornwall's fairy kingdom which their father Tala was turning into an industrial dictatorship and the friends who helped them escape living in Central Park always cheered me up. The endless coincidences surrounding Magenta, a bag lady who seems to think she's a Greek general, were something to ponder. And there's more.

For a relatively short book this has a complex plot and a huge cast of characters and somehow it all fits so well together that I can just imagine the author sitting up for days and nights making flow charts and diagrams as how to wrap it all up so perfectly.

By the time we'd reached the end (about eight months after we started) I even had a diagnosis. Call me crazy but I attribute this in part to the magic of this book. The perfect, crazy, hair die, rock and roll, inter racial, sacred, clannish, love, flower filled, whisky flowing, punk, homeless, artsy, Celtic, Italian, Chinese, Goninan and New York magic which flowed from every word in this book and out my mother's mouth.

Needless to say I recommend you read this out loud with someone you love. Failing that, try not to race through it because a book like this comes around once in a lifetime and the first reading should be savored.

Stars? This book doesn't need any stinking 1-5 star scale. It is a sky filled full of them.

I heard of Martin Millar from Neil Gaiman's blog. Neil Gaiman praised Martin Millar's wisdom, wit and solid writing in "The Good Fairies of New York" -- and mentioned it a few more times. I loved the premise of punk rock fairies and wanted to check it out, but couldn't afford it.

Finally, when (August 23, 2003, in the blog) Neil's assistant Lorraine was cited as claiming that Millar's as-of-yet unpublished book "Lonely Werewolf Girl" might be the best book ever written, and then (Novemeber 2003, at Sequential Tart) Neil namechecked him again, I made it my mission in life (I'm a writer, bookseller and rare book scout) to track down a damaged copy. They wanted $54 for a scrunched copy of the Collected with a bite out of the back cover and the title page torn out. (I paid $38 plus $4 shipping, but -- at this point, rabid -- I really needed it.)

I've only read "The Good Fairies of New York" and have two entire Millar novels to go. It's ingenious. He ambles between traditional fairy motifs and the Gods of Punk Rawk. Deftly and cheerfully, he spins the stories of characters that mainstream bestsellers tend to skip. Millar's favorite writer, according to his website, is Jane Austen. It shows. Whimsically and precisely, with a fun plot that turns corners on a dime, all sorts of delicious mayhem ensue. If you've ever wanted Johnny Thunders of The New York Dolls to come back from heaven to find his lost guitar, or if you've ever wondered why reels can be so tricky on the fiddle, or if you've tired of some of the more traditional types of fantasies, the book's for you.

If you're as poor as I am, get Kelly Link's "Stranger Things Happen" or Matt Ruff's "Set This House in Order" or Jonathan Carroll's "White Apples." They're all in print in paperback. But if you've read those (and Gaiman and Kiernan and Mieville and the others pushing things forward), then treat yourself to "The Good Fairies of New York." It's wrong that it's out of print and so expensive, but it's oh so worth it.

I read this book for at least the third time again last night, its the type of book that ensures that youre not at all embarassed to chuckle out loud on a bus because you know its worth it. Amazingly layered, and hilarious; if I could be an original writer like this i'd be damn happy.

I scour thrift shops for used books, and have stumbled upon some doozies in my time. One of my personal favorites has been the (out-of-print, and very expensive) UK 3-book collection of Martin Millar's unique fantasy novels. I knew nothing about the book or the author, but was intrigued by the day-glo green cover of a punk-rocker in a tu-tu, and the blurbs about the novels. This novel seemed the most interesting to me - I was intrigued by the idea of punk fairies. I read this book in a few days, staying up late, and enjoyed it immensely. The fairies are highly entertaining, and the human characters are very well-drawn and sympathetic, providing an intersting balance of comedy and pathos. I haven't read the other two books in my omnibus edition, I'm saving them. But, I am delighted to see that this book that I thought was so obscure and hard to find coming in to print in the US, and with a gushing intro by Neil Gaiman. I hope this book finds an audience, and that we get more of this author's works in print on this side of the Atlantic.

If you haven't read The Good Fairies of New York, and especially if you are a New Yorker, or a New Yorker at heart, stop reading this right now, and immediately put your name on the Amazon.com pre-order list ... The Good Fairies have found their way back home to Amazon.com and to NYC, and everyone around the world is overly excited by the news!

I have been addicted to Martin Millar for over ten years. I was one of the lucky few to have purchased a copy of The Good Fairies of New York before it became an out-of-print statistic.

Martin has a talent for twisting the logic out of reality, and making you believe his tales are not mere inventions of his fragmented mind, but instead are actual events. The Good Fairies of New York will make you a believer, if not in fairies, at least in Martin's belief that they exist.

The Good Fairies is not a child's fairytale, but instead a tale that includes fairies. Martin's forte is writing about characters that are flawed (some physically flawed, all emotionally flawed). Although Martin brings a refreshing childlike innocence in his approach of character development, his books are very adult orientated.

He is not afraid to tackle serious subjects using a perverse sense of humor to lighten the mood when life becomes too grim. The Good Fairies will take you on an emotional ride that you will want to re-experience over and over.

All of Martin's books should have the following label ... Caution: be forewarned that all it takes is one book to become a Martin Millar junkie!

When a colleague of mine recommended me to read this book -no, she urged me to read it- I believed it would be like every other "great" book. It isn't. It's better.
It's the story of wild juvenile elves who behave just like adolescent girls and boys- i.e. they consume drugs, they struggle with the traditions of the elderly and -at last- they bring chaos to a whole city.
You're thinking: what could they do to have this effect?
If you want to know, you got to read it!
"The Good Fairies..." is not just another crazy story but more:
it's satire and allegory, it's a love story (between human beings) and it's an hint on things we can't see any more with our rationalist eyes!

I'm joining the soreheads at the bottom of the stack because I think they need cheering up. They all seem to be mad at the book because it's not some other book they thought it was going to be. What it IS, is a fantastic shuffle of images and characters that resolves, like an old-fashioned animation, into a kind of narrative. And, as in an animation, a lot of the characters look so alike it's easy to mistake one for another. You can regard that as a bug or a feature; your choice.

For the record, this book is not much like a book by Neil Gaiman. It's a lot like books by Christopher Moore and a little like books by Jeff Noon. Maybe a little Terry Pratchett thrown in for luck. I would give it five stars or six, but all the popular kids are already doing that.

Friends like Neil Gaiman are good to have. Neil Gaiman's not the co-author of this book, he wrote the introduction. Perhaps Gaiman writes the kind of books he would like to read, because "The Good Fairies of New York" is a lot like a Neil Gaiman book. It's an urban fantasy set in, yes, New York, where a group of Irish, Scottish and Cornish fairies have unexpectedly landed. In the universe of "Good Fairies", New York is populated by fairies that accompanied each of New York's major immigrant groups. So there are black fairies, Italian fairies, and Chinese fairies. I am curious if a sequel would introduce the Indian fairies in Queens, Jewish fairies, or Polish or German fairies.

Unlike a book from a brand-name publisher, this book could use a good editor. A good editor could have removed the rough edges that come from a British writer setting a story in New York City. Because of the author's unfamiliarity with American language and culture (although encyclopedic knowledge of certain rock subgenres), the fairy culture seems more real than the New York that the two human characters, Kerry and Dinnie, share with the fairy characters. Martin Millar shows a great deal of promise. He treats his human characters with a light touch, but they are sympathetic, none the less. Kerry is the rare character in fiction who has an ostomy, which is compassionately treated. His love of both Celtic and punk rock add a richness of texture that helps compensate for other shortcomings. I hope Martin Millar gets signed by a bigger publisher and continues to develop his talents.

Initially,I was attracted to the book by the seeming synchronicity of the subject matter and my life - a girl named Kerry with Crohn's disease who meets up with some fairies while living in NYC, and I myself, a girl named Carri, who has battled Crohn's disease, who lived in NYC and has a mild obsession for all things fae - not to mention, a forward by my favorite writer, Neil Gaiman, Fables and Reflections (Sandman, Book 6), to lure me in. Unfortunately, my familiarity with the subject matter made the book's disjointed narrative painfully slow to read. There are far too many characters which received little in the way of fleshing out (who is Aelric, or is it Aelis?) Even the two main fairy figures, Heather and Morag, essentially blended to one in my mind, since they retained little individuality, even in their constant arguing. Then, the contrived narrative hinges, including a dried flower, a fiddle, and a fairy flag, all three getting lost and found about a million times each, seemed relatively trite when compared with the reality of dealing with a disease as wasting as the one the main character suffers through. I was moved, but only in spells. And these fairy spells were lacking the magick required to earn a higher rating from me. The book may be more enjoyable for you if you have a special interest in the New York Dolls, and other punk bands, or if you have an interest in Ancient Greek warfare. But to me, these disparate, complicated threads stretched the plot too thin and kept me in a constant state of confusion. Neil Gaiman's forward only serves to point out how lacking this story truly is, when held next to his own brilliant tales.

The story itself is compelling, but the execution left me dry.

Throughout the book, the author switches character point of view constantly and rapidly. In several instances, point of view is changed four times within the span of two pages. This is very jarring to read, since you can't become sympathetic to any of the characters before suddenly reading about a different one.

Additionally, there are many references to Scottish and Irish folk music and terminology that came across as the musical equivalent of "technobabble." Musical styles were referenced without explanation for the reader, so unless you are already versed in the differences between strathspreys and jigs and such, you won't understand some of the emotional content of certain passages. Someone well-versed in these musical styles, however, may be very well pleased by their inclusion.

Overall, the story is solid, but the telling was a bit too scattered and technical to be truly enjoyable.