Customer Reviews

The Limits of Enchantment: A Novel

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At the outset, let me say this: anything written by Graham Joyce is well worth reading.

Having said that, this novel did not invoke the little thrills of supernatural delight that some of his other novels have produced in me - 'Requiem' being by far the best in my opinion. After reading the latter, I immediately procured every available novel written by this author, and in general, have not been disappointed.


With the release of 'Facts of Life', the general ambience of high strangeness common to most of Joyce's works changed - perhaps to suit a wider audience. It obviously worked well, because 'Facts of Life' won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and it seems to me that this novel, The Limits of Enchantment, is in the same genre. It is exactly that: enchanting and charming - but lacking the weird magic that so attracted me to Joyce's work in the first place.

In 1960's Britain, apprentice herb-witch and midwife Fern must deal with her foster mother's illness, hostile landlords, and her own conflicting desires.

This is a sweet, quiet story, told in understated, sophisticated language. The plot -- young person comes of age and joins society by making the right friends -- is familiar, but it is well realized here. Magical elements are vivid but never overexplained, and the subtle characterization works well. To me there's a slight lack of tension and genuine danger, but I still enjoyed the book a lot.

This might appeal to readers of Richard Grant's books about Pippa the witch, and readers of Jonathan Carroll and Gregory Maguire as well as, obviously, those who have enjoyed Joyce's other work.

Ever since reading The Tooth Fairy, we have looked forward to releases from Graham Joyce. In book after book, Mr. Joyce has found a way to connect us with a world just beyond our senses, a world that we suspect exists in our most primitive brains but perhaps have become too "civilized" to accept anymore.

In The Limits of Enchantment, Mr. Joyce tells a tale of modern midwifery (circa late 1960's). Fern is a daughter to Mammy, an elderly midwife whom we might consider a witch. There is a warlock too in an old man named John and many other characters dancing about the shadows who appear to possess or at least believe in hedgerow magic.

This isn't a fantasy book though. It's a tale of tough living in small-town England. It's a social tale about class and power and the cycle of life as the reigns are passed down from one generation to the next.

Fern is passing into true adulthood and she is unsure of herself, unsure of the way life seems to be pressing itself in on her. She wants to believe in the old ways but she's not sure. She wants to give in to love with a local man, but again she's unsure. This is a powerful book with a few twists and turns to keep the pages flying.

Try to read it and not come away looking for ravens in the sky and eyes peeping from a hedge. Try to read it and not feel a true sense of humanity when the end comes. These emotions come whether you want them or not, just as life presses in on Fern no matter how much she'd rather run.

Graham Joyce's fiction mingles fantasy with the mainstream, which, like Jonathan Carroll, often leaves him labeled, for lack of a better description, as a magic realist. Joyce's early books, particularly his masterworks Requiem (1995) and The Tooth Fairy (1996), were templates for how to expertly blend the magical with the mundane. His passion and edginess and willingness to embrace the fantastic in these books deservedly brought him multiple World Fantasy Awards and, more importantly, an avid cult following in genre circles - of which, I happily call myself an acolyte.

My first Joyce novel, Requiem - a modern, religious-themed fantasy - took me unsuspectingly by storm, leaving me anxiously awaiting each of his new novels. His following novel, The Tooth Fairy, upped the ante, and proved Joyce's versatility, tackling childhood superstition and coming-of-age themes with a plaintive, albeit, optimistic eye. The reason I continue to diligently read Graham Joyce is because of these two novels.

Then there are his post-Tooth Fairy books: Dark Sister (1999), Indigo (1999), Smoking Poppy (2002), and The Facts of Life (2003), all deeply satisfying, although also deeply flawed and well short of Requiem and The Tooth Fairy. Now, Joyce gives us The Limits of Enchantment, which is a long way from Requiem with its very mainstream, very accessible first-person narrator, Fern Cullen. Her story is one of a young woman grappling with the moribund rituals of her magical ancestry as they clash with the burgeoning culture of rock 'n roll, drugs, and science in a late 1960s English village. It's the kind of episodic, predictable story that delves too deeply into unforgivable melodrama - when Fern's Mammy grows ill and Fern's sanity is questioned by the town's people, the plot unfolds in expected fashion.

The Limits of Enchantment reveals a writer who has dismissed the kind of inventive and strange fantasy stories that earned him a cult following, in exchange for an easy-to-swallow soap opera with supernatural undertones (undertones that I would have liked to have seen brought to the fore a bit more often). The amazing feat here, is that the book is not bereft of merits: thanks to swift pacing and a very likable narrator, the book has the comforts of an old quilt - one with many holes and flaws.

Joyce's stories once felt dangerous, his storytelling skills boundless. The Limits of Enchantment could not feel more safe, or more like a book by an author who has become too comfortable in his own clothes. Many genre critics have declared this book another Joyce masterpiece, a book that deserves to gain him wider readership, and have named him one of the genre community's best. On his past work, he certainly deserves to be read, but that does not justify giving his latest a free pass. Because The Limits of Enchantment is no great work of literature - it is fun, it is safe, like a 1950s cinematic melodrama. And it is definitely not a Requiem or The Tooth Fairy. This humble critic can only hope that one day the author who wrote these early books will return.

This story of Mammy the midwife and Fern, her adopted daughter, grabbed my heart on the first page and didn't let go until just a few minutes ago as I sat sunning in my back yard physically aching that the book had ended. I put the book down, sighed very deeply and contentedly, and immediately decided to purchase the book to keep forever. (I happened upon it at the library.) It's more than the story of an herbalist in the mid-1960's, and it's more than a "fairy story". It's a magical slice out of life, a trip out of this realm into the mystical, wise, unseen realm of "other" that some of us know exists (and have experienced for ourselves), but cannot prove. I'm having trouble finding words to adequately express the beauty, depth and mystery of this one-on-a-kind tale. That it is a book full of mainly female characters written by a male, just makes it all the more enigmatic to me.

In short, buy this book, read it, treasure it, share it with your friends and above all, absorb the magnificent wisdom imparted therein. I'd have to say it's one of the very best books I've read this year.

The Times are a changing. It is 1966 and society is undergoing profound change. The sexual revolution is in full force, illegal drugs are have become de rigor, hippies are appearing and camping out in the unlikeliest of places, and men and dogs are orbiting the earth in space capsules. Not much has changed though for, Fern Cullen, who has been living most of her life in a cottage in the Leicestershire countryside with her adopted "Mammy." Mammy is the center of Fern's life, when Fern listens, Mammy answers; and Mammy interprets the world for her. In turn Fern assists Mammy in helping the local girls when they get into the "family way," and also aids her in delivering children.

Mammy is a wise woman in her 70s who relies on a compendium of herbs and natural potions to do her job. She's full of ancient wisdom and is totally in tune with the earth and the wilderness of the world around her. The villagers come to her asking all sorts of advice and she's always available to bless their marriages, provide traditional remedies and support the village's ancient ceremonies. But there's some in the village who are suspect of her ancient ways; thinking that she's full of superstitious hocus-pocus, and one who dabbles in witchcraft.

The outside world is starting to encroach on Mammy's dependable English folk traditions. A young girl dies after coming to Mammy for help. The villagers blame her and gradually begin to turn on her, and for the first time Mammy realizes that no matter how much you try to help people "they always turn on you one day." For almost twenty years Mammy had been Fern's shield and pathway through the world, but suddenly Mammy is sent away to live in an institution-like hospital, and Fern is finally forced to enter the real world.

The National Health Service has not only usurped traditional medicine, but also outlawed its practitioners. Midwives now need certificates, and illegal abortionists can be imprisoned. Doctors and social workers have the power to take people out of their homes and lock them in hospitals and asylums. With the local landowners trying to evict Fern from her cottage, Fern begins to find sides of herself that she never thought existed. Fern must seize the day, rediscover the ability to step one foot in front of the other, and move towards the "chromium light."

She bakes a cake for a wedding, filling it with love; she hands over bundles of mugwort and sage to cure period pains; and fuelled by magic mushrooms, she embarks on a ritual called the Asking, which culminates in her rebirth as a fully-fledged woman. Through this transcendental experience, and haunted by the spirit of Mammy, Fern finds the strength to counter the forces that are out to destroy her.

The Limits of Enchantment is part fantasy heavily steeped in the magical realist tradition, and also part statement on a steadily encroaching modern world that is run by cynical landowners, bureaucrats and politicians who are content to discount eccentrics as mad, and destroy the ancient and wily folk traditions of the English countryside. Contemporary science and traditional mysticism are steadily coming together and it's like a train wreck waiting to happen. This is a remarkable little novel that raises some serious issues about the clash of two very different worlds, but it's also a spellbinding account of one naïve girl's attempts to take on a harsh, and contemptuous system that is intent on getting rid of the old ways. Mike Leonard March 05.

In his novel "The Limits of Enchantment", Graham Joyce seemingly effortlessly insinuates the manifestation of magic in the everyday world without the need to create an entirely imaginary universe where the laws of classical physics bend and redefine themselves according to rules built solely on the whim of the typical fantasy author. This amalgam of the supernatural with a real point in a timeline (in this case, the pre-moon-landing sixties) positions Joyce on an upper tier of novelists of which few exist----Elizabeth Hand (Mortal Love, Waking the Moon, Black Light) whose clever interventions between folklore characters and mere and haplessly ill-prepared mortals immediately comes to mind as does Keith Donohue whose changeling story in "The Stolen Child" mesmerizes with a similar mix of the inexplicable and the routine. The ability to render a world seen through the somewhat undefined haze of the unexplained while still recounting quotidian events in a thrilling plotline hallmarks Joyce's success as not only a storyteller of great deftness but, a craftsman of almost incomparable skill.

Joyce's artistry consumes the reader with an inside look into the angry changing world of twenty-one year old Fern, adopted daughter to Mammy, the village hedgerow medicine woman. Like us all, Fern perceives that which she has become familiar as natural. Women in pre-legal abortion England in 1966 flock to Mammy with their "problems" and with the aid of a herbal concoction and an unexplained knowledge of the ways of the "Mistress", Mammy launches them back into their lives trouble-free after revealing to her the paternity of the unborn child. Over the years the list of fathers has grown substantially providing an insurance of sorts for this herbalist threatened by the advent of socialized medicine and an overall transcendence from the unexplained great mysteries to the rigid science and technology. Even more, the list hedges all of Mammy's bets as with her seventy-seven years of wisdom she understands sadly that true darkness does not lie beneath a waning moon or in adverse interpretations of cosmology but in the hearts of those who have something less than pure to hide and manifest their desires in the form of brutal inhumanity. Sheltered by Mammy's experience, Fern sits on the fence of a proverbial Age of Aquarius, struggling to find some correlation between the sagacity and necessity of secrecy of an older oral tradition most of which Mammy hints to her about but never reveals and the legitimacy of joining the new establishment where science and a degree in midwifery reign supreme in a more departmentalized world.

As Joyce telescopes in and out from one definition of the world to the other, we discover that we, too, share Fern's confused perspective. We appreciate Mammy and her knowledge and yet we simultaneously scoff at it. We admire our so-called betters and applaud the accolades of those who achieve degrees of professional success on the established "ladder" but we also shake our heads over the mundane conformity of such a routine track. The freewheeling life of the 60s hippie calls to us, but doesn't the lack of structure and functionalism suggest indolence rather than the dawning of a new world? Like Fern and her intimate knowledge of child birthing, we think we know all there is to know about the mysteries of sex---that is until that other sex confronts us with intimacies we are unable to ever fully absorb. How foolish to think one could ever know anyone let alone one's self?

"The Limits of Enchantment" explores the ceilings we impose upon ourselves by challenging what we really believe in. Whether we live an existence where magic is possible or not, we still have to contend with the motivations and machinations of the human heart----in this case a veritable "heart of darkness" propelled by selfish intent to keep those in power in power and disable those of a purer essence with societal rules forged to curb change.

When Fern enters a realm she barely believes in, she teeters precariously towards insanity replete with talking hares and dancing ghosts. Only through a kindness that she finds more substantial than the proverbial thicker-than-water blood does she come of age, defining herself in her own terms as she straddles the past and present to create an interesting future for herself.

Bottom line? Graham Joyce outdoes himself in "The Limits of Enchantment." Not only is his creation of Fern's narration authentically believable in every way, his ability to kaleidoscope from the supernatural to the practical keeps the reader spellbound. His uncanny way of explaining events without fully disclosing every detail imbues the indefinable with a mystical definition that adds dimension to the story and complexity to the characters. Simply wonderfully done! Highly recommended--- more, Mr. Graham, more!
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

I think Graham Joyce is an excellent writer. In my opinion, his books "Tooth Fairy" and "The Facts Of Life" are masterpieces. They're both books that teach a lesson about staying human in a world where difficult experiences can turn even the best people into shriveled, bitter husks; about surviving through adversity; about growing up and enjoying life through the good and the bad. Those books do all of this with a wonderful sense of magic, whimsy, wit, and emotion; they are good examples of what is often called "magical realism."

However, "The Limits Of Enchantment" is a definite step backwards, or perhaps more astutely, Joyce is standing in place on this one. Both "Tooth Fairy" and "Facts of Life" were great portraits of the old ways dying out and meeting the new. I think this works especially well in Europe; "The Facts of Life" was set in the 40s and 50s, "Tooth Fairy" the late 50s and early 60s. What's interesting about these times is that they were sort of the nexus between the very old and the very new: as late as the 1950s, even, you had ultra-modern cities not terribly different from todays that existed along side rural hamlets where not much had changed since the 1830s, where many people still did not have phones, automobiles, or even electricity. It's that junction between the two eras that provides a particularly fertile breeding ground for storytelling, particularly in "The Facts of Life."

However, most the mistakes that "The Facts of Life" doesn't make, unfortunately "The Limits of Enchantment" does. The former of these two books managed to illustrate the human drama without falling into melodrama; it managed to tell the tale of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times without being too folksy, cloying, or precious; and it has fully fleshed-out characters who usually manage to subvert and rise above the stereotypes. "The Limits of Enchantment" does none of these things and falls into the traps stated.

Fern, is like Cassie from FoL, a wispy girl with a better sense of the magic of the unseen world than that of the real. However, Joyce let Cassie be flighty, unresponsible, and ethereal. Cassie did not have to carry the story all by herself. Fern pretty much has to. Mammy is too much like the matriarch of the family in FoL, except with even more no-nonsense gruff love, folksy sayings, and down-home wisdom, so much so it's cloying.

The story is about Mammy, a midwife, and her daughter Fern. Both possess magical knowledge and instincts. They live in rural England, and Mammy is an old-time midwife who doesn't feel she has to meet the qualifications of the modern medical world (a theme also briefly touched upon in FoL). Fern is her assistant and student of unconventional lore. Everything is going pretty much okay, even with hippie-biker Arthur trying to court Fern and giving her (somewhat) unwanted attention. Then there's a unfortunate accident that turns the townsfolk into the equivalent of villagers with torches and pitchforks, Mammy falls ill, Fern's sanity is questioned, the county threatens to foreclose their home, and a number of offbeat characters may represent Fern's only hope to save herself and her mother and learn a thing or two about magic and herself along the way.

It sounds okay, but like I said earlier, I think Joyce has been down these roads once too often, and unlike his earlier works, he lays it on too thick here. We get more passages laying on the mystery and wonder of magic here than we have in the past, the plot turns are more sappy, overwrought, unlikely, and melodramatic than in the past, the characters are painted with a broader brush and not fleshed out as well, and the whole atmosphere is at times too melodramatic, too saccharine, too wistful, too cloying, and even too sappy.

I think Graham Joyce is a fantastic writer; I know he can do better than this. This is not a bad book. From another author, it might be a great work. But not for Joyce. I think it's time he moved on to a different type/style of novel for a while. In all honestly, he executed this type of novel so perfectly and wondrously in "The Facts of Life" that he really had nothing left to prove. I think he used up his best tricks for that book and subsequently was left with little her, and it shows by pale example. I recommend this book, but would recommend reading Joyce's other works first so you can appreciate what he is truly capable of.

Joyce's books kind of creep up on me when I'm least expecting it. Sentences and paragraphs and ideas drift in long after I've finished reading his books. "The Limits of Enchantment" has definitely been making me aware that it's sitting at the edges of my consciousness.

Apprentice midwife Fern has learned all she knows from her adoptive mother, the midwife/herbalist/hedge witch Mammy. But times, they are achangin'.

Potions, a woman dying, hippies/beatniks/soap dodgers, eviction notices, a hopeful lover who rides a motorcycle, bigotry, a hospital, Asking, a hare, hare pie....and much more.

Fern has lived a 17th century life and now must learn about the times she actually lives in. Joyce has created a strong but feminine protaganist. This was a delightful read.

We loved this novel...
dear lovers of magical fiction,
... by Graham Joyce. This is the story of Fern who has been raised to be a midwife and an herbalist and an old fashion hedge witch who comes smack into conflict with 1960's England and a fast changing world. The magic here is less dramatic than you'll find in Charles DeLint's, or Holly Black's, or Maggie Stiefvater's novels, but is, in its way, all the more potent for being subtle and real. The characters are alive, and we feel as though we could, or in some cases, do know them. Highly recommended, particularly if you like Alice Hoffman's books.
We had read one of Graham Joyce's novels previously The Tooth Fairy: A Novel, which led us to this one. Now, because of this story we will read all the rest he's written.
kyela,
the silver elves