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Magic Street by Orson Scott Card
01/07/2005 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
Dick Francis knows that his name alone will ensure a place on the next best seller list, especially if there is a horse on the cover. His readers are comfortable with what he writes and the bills get paid. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. Buy Magic Street in the USA - or Buy Magic Street in the UK  />Dick Francis knows that his name alone will ensure a place on the next best seller list, especially if there is a horse on the cover. His readers are comfortable with what he writes and the bills get paid. Other writers enjoy continuing the saga of their characters and have enough imagination to continue to add twists and turns to their lives. While they are comfortable with this approach, their readers will stay with them. All too often, though, a writer becomes stale, stuck in the rut of commercial demand. This is far too common within genre fiction. The mainstream or literary writers seem to be the ones that take risks.
They are credited with cutting edge literature. Their dilemma is that whereas they get critical acclaim, they do not sell huge numbers of copies, unless they make it on to the Man-Booker shortlist. A few writers feel the need to experiment, to try something different with each book they write. The best take their readers with them. Orson Scott Card is numbered among this elite.
Card won Hugos for his SF novels 'Ender's Game' and 'Speaker For the Dead'. He has written alternate histories in his Alvin Maker series. Some authors try to break out of the mould publishers would like to cast them in by setting themselves challenges. This could be the attempt to use a viewpoint character of a different sex, age or social background to the author. Some succeed, others fall flat on their faces. In 'Magic Street', Card has a cast of black characters. To me, he seems to have done a very good job. The voices seem authentic. But I am a white British reader. Only a black American male will know if he has succeeded. The novel is also urban fantasy. That, I know, works.
From the start, you are aware that something strange is going on in this neighbourhood. Byron Williams is a college lecturer. He is very particular about who he lets ride in his car. Yet he picks up a scruffy, smelly vagrant and stops to buy him sweets. On arriving home, he finds his wife giving birth. When he left in the morning, she wasn't even pregnant. Then the bag man takes away the child in a plastic grocery bag.
A short while later, Ceese Tucker finds a baby in a bag by the drain pipe in the local park. The Tuckers' neighbour and a nurse at the local hospital, Ura Lee Smitcher, unexpectedly finds herself in the position of foster-mother to the foundling. Ceese takes on the role of big brother. The child, named Mack Street, grows up as a familiar figure, welcome in everyone's home. A few strange things happen and Mack is subject to strange dreams but it isn't until he is thirteen that he begins to find out about his true inheritance.
Some things can only be seen out of the corner of your eye. If you look directly at them they are not there. Mack discovers a house in the magical space between two others. At this point, another layer or dimension is laid over the neighbourhood. The inhabitant of the house is Puck. He is also the Bag Man that took the baby Mack from Byron's house. The place Mack has discovered is an entrance to Fairyland. He finds that he can explore it but anything he leaves there manifests itself in the real world as something unexpected; a canvas tent in Fairyland became a bus shelter but nowhere near a bus stop.
The situation comes to a head when Mack is seventeen and Yolanda White moves into the area. This is another turning point in the novel as the causes of the strange events are revealed. Mack has choices to make and the futures of all his friends may depend on his decisions.
Bringing an idea such as fairies, particularly those that appear in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', into a black neighbourhood could be a dangerous thing to do. However, Card is such a skilful story-teller that the idea is not as incongruous as it might seem. From my perspective, this is an excellent novel which blends reality and fantasy seamlessly. I hope it works as well for all readers.
Pauline Morgan
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