Say Hi to a Certain Kind of Hybrid Fiction

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Flying without an airplane in The Master and Margarita. (Screenshot by me.)

Most novels are basically realistic, but quite a few others — including those in genres such as sci-fi, fantasy, time travel, and ghost fiction — are, shall we say, imaginative.

Then there novels that fall somewhere in between: containing a little or a lot of the magical/supernatural, yet also grounded in actuality — making for a potentially fascinating mix. Those hybrid-ish books are the subject of today’s blog post.

I just read Elin Hilderbrand’s The Matchmaker, an excellent novel about the life and work of Nantucket woman Dabney Kimball Beech — whose long-ago love returns to the Massachusetts island after 27 years as a foreign correspondent. All is pretty much realistic, except Dabney has the power of knowing if a potential couple is or isn’t made for each other by the color of an aura she sees surrounding them. Dabney has “arranged” 42 still-intact marriages over the decades — even as her daughter Agnes is in a toxic relationship that Dabney had warned against. What happens with them and other characters makes for compelling reading of the uplifting and tragic variety.

Another supernatural-type moment in an otherwise mostly realistic novel is when the title character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre hears Edward Rochester’s anguished voice from a distance way too far to have actually heard his voice. A reader might initially think this pivotal occurrence was Jane’s imagination, but the novel makes it clear it wasn’t.

All-too-real domestic violence perpetrated by a brutal police officer against his wife is a major focus of Stephen King’s novel Rose Madder, but things eventually take a turn to the fantastical when people can literally enter a painting. Which reminds me of Jasper Fforde’s novel The Eyre Affair, in which people can literally enter the pages of Bronte’s aforementioned classic.

Then there’s “magical realism” — the very name of which says this genre of fiction combines the material and the mystical. For instance, some people fly in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the character Clara in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits possesses paranormal powers. Also, “father of magical realism” Jorge Luis Borges wrote short stories that included such things as a library of infinite size.

In Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, there’s also a character who flies sans airplane — as well as a magical skin ointment that creates invisibility and, most notably, the appearance of Satan among humans.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series? Mostly set in the wizard world, but there are also various scenes in the human (Muggle) world where a young Harry lived for more than a decade.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Not ghost fiction but ghost fact: In the video below, my cat Misty encounters a pre-Halloween decoration during his daily leashed walk this past Friday morning. 

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a problematic former mayor who’s running for governor, the welcome possibility of a moratorium on artificial-turf fields, and more — is here.

78 thoughts on “Say Hi to a Certain Kind of Hybrid Fiction”

  1. Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons are almost too realistic – especially for non-sailors, and anybody fretting about child safety*

    Entire Ransome series lived in our house, green hardbacks, Peter Duck and Missee Lee sailed to other worlds, over the sea and in the far, far east, supposedly real, recognisable fantasy. Marco Polo for kids ? Great Northern was exciting, but not fantasy in the same way -partly at least thanks to family holidays in Orkney , real Great Northerns too,

    • Non swimming seven year old, sailing on a deep lake, camping on an island. With paternal approval ?

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  2. You’re not afraid of those books, Misty are you? No, I thought so (bit like that Luna – just go to sleep). So what was I thinking? Oh yes, I have loved Isabel Allende, especially The House of the Spirits, and several others as well, also Carlos Ruiz Zaron’s quartet – The Shadow of the Wild series which can be read in any order, so clever, and such a pity since he is sadly know more. And finally, I was thinking about Jasper Fforde, especially The Well of Lost Plots (well, of course, I would think about that wouldn’t I!).

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    • Thank you, Chris! Ha — 😂 — the only book Misty is scared of is Donald Trump’s ghostwritten “The Art of the Deal.” 🙂

      “The House of the Spirits” IS a wonderful novel, and Jasper Fforde’s work is extremely clever.

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  3. My cats don’t like things that flap so they wouldn’t have approached the ghost. Mae Clair has a number of excellent books which are set in reality but have a paranormal element, as does D.L. Finn. Stephen King has paranormal mixed with a realistic setting and I think that is what makes his books so scary. People are just living an ordinary life and “bam” ghosts appear and start ruining everyone’s life.

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  4. Two books came to mind.

    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is rife with mysticism of man versus nature. It is filled with ghosts of a real kind.

    The other, with more obvious ghosts, is A Ghost and His Gold, by Roberta Eaton Cheadle.

    It is most definitely a hybrid. Set in today’s reality and the reality of the Boer War, ghosts make their appearance to make a point, a point about the uselessness of war in the long run.

    I know I have mentioned this book on your blog recently, but “if the shoe fits, wear it!”

    Oh no! Now I’ve got that old joke about the Foo Bird flying around my brain.

    Love the Misty video! Meowgic to my eyes.

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  5. I’ll have to read the Matchmaker! I haven’t got to that one yet but you know how much I love her books. Her Hotel Nantucket also has a bit of a supernatural twist, which I found to be very entertaining! This post brought to mind a book I read a few years ago called “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.” While it’s mostly a dual timeline connecting the past and the present, there is a really neat supernatural tie-in. A fantastic book, if you ever have the time. I say that because it is a bit of a commitment, on the longer side!

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    • Thank you, M.B.! Definitely true about “The Hotel Nantucket” having a supernatural twist (its memorable ghost), but I decided not to mention that novel again in this post after mentioning it a few weeks ago. 🙂 “THN” is better than “The Matchmaker,” but the latter is still excellent. A real page-turner, with very entertaining and very tear-jerking elements. Thanks again for getting me interested in Elin Hilderbrand’s work; I’ve now polished off three of her novels — with more in my future. 🙂

      “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” does sound intriguing!

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  6. I haven’t read that many novels in my life, but in “Anna Karenina” Anna had a recurring dream of a French speaking Russian peasant who was always working on a railroad track. She interpreted this dream as an omen of death. In one scene both she and Count Vronsky had the same dream of seeing the peasant when both characters felt guilt about their adulterous affair.

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  7. Some of Heinlein’s later stuff was more fantasy than “hard” science fiction, but the one work of his that I think best fits your theme today is “Job: A Comedy of Justice.”
    The protag, Hergeschimer, lives in a “real world” but finds himself and his lady unwillingly and unpredictably traveling from one reality to another, eventually meeting God and Satan (who aren;t quite like what the rigidly fundamentalist Hergeschimer expected) and then meeting _their_ boss.
    Slight twist: Heinlein drops a subtle hint — not crucial to the story, but entertaining when you realize it — that Hergeschimer’s home “reality” isn’t quite our own, but looks a lot like it, and that one of the “realities” he briefly and unwillingly visits is, in fact, our own. The clue is delightfully mundane, and is a rare instance of Heinlein expressing approval of the way we do things.

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    • Thank you, Don! “Job: A Comedy of Justice” sounds really interesting and different. (I’ve only read two Heinlein novels, including “Starship Troopers” of course. 🙂 ) Great description/summary by you!

      I was reminded a bit of some time-travel novels in which people are “unwillingly and unpredictably” yanked out of their normal existence — “Kindred” by Octavia E. Butler, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, etc.

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  9. Many thanks, Dave, for having showed us how careful Misty approches the ghost ! The Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison seems also very much to be about bags of gold, which the father Macon
    makes his son Milkman and his friend Guitar steal from the owner!

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  11. Misty was wise to hesitate before approaching the ghost; some of them are scarier than others. Magical realism is a mixed bag for me. If the magic isn’t grounded in the realism I get impatient or confused.

    The books I’ve written have supernatural elements, but I like to think they are realistic at heart.

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    • Thank you, Audrey! Yes, it’s best for a cat to approach a ghost slowly, so Misty left his roller skates inside. 🙂

      I hear you about magical realism; if it isn’t done well, it can be off-putting and/or gimmicky. Nice that your books have some supernatural elements while basically being realistic. That’s a great combination.

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  12. I’m currently reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, thanks to your recommendation. Under authoritarian governments where freedom of expression is censored and punished, the use of supernatural and fantastical elements offer opportunities for storytellers to spotlight their leaders and collaborators, and reveal the atrocities perpetrated against the citizenry.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! Great that you’re reading “The Master and Margarita” — which is symbolic/metaphorical/political but also a very entertaining novel.

      You’re SO right that fantastical and supernatural elements can enable authors to “covertly” do sociopolitical commentary. Very well said by you! “Star Trek” did that, too.

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        • Sorry about that, Rosaliene. I hear you — some of the book is a bit of a slog. But, overall, I found enough entertaining moments to happily keep me going. I hope I’m not misremembering; looking at my first blog post mentioning “The Master and Margarita,” I see I read it more than five years ago. 🙂

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  13. I read quite a few fantasy novels, including a number of Stephen King’s; I loved the Harry Potter series, books by Naomi Novik (if you don’t know her, I highly recommend Spinning Silver at a place to start), Ursula Le Guin’s The Wizard of Earthsea series, and a number of other past and current fantasies. But I confess to having some trouble with these “hybrid” books. When I am reading what appears to be a perfectly realistic book, and it suddenly (or even slowly) turns into a complete fantasy, I don’t mind. But when I’m reading a “real life” book and it introduces one piece of impossibility (like a talking dog) and then continues to “pretend” to be a realistic novel, I get irritated. I feel as if the author is trying to trick me somehow.

    Now that I’ve said that, I have to confess that I loved REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, which does exactly that with an octopus. In that book, I completely accepted the octopus’s extraordinary behavior and enjoyed it! But I had a problem with the “magic” dog in LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY, for example.

    I guess I’m not always consistent!

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    • Thank you, Kim! Magic popping up in a realistic novel can indeed be jarring. I guess a lot of one’s reaction to that can depend on the author and how she or he handles things — which you seem to be alluding to as well.

      Talking dog? I must say I liked the “Martha Speaks” children’s books and TV series when my younger daughter was a kid. Then again, the hilarious Martha the dog talked all the time, so it wasn’t a surprise. 🙂

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  14. First off, kudos to Misty for not backing down form that encounter. I feel bad tooting my own horn in your blog, but I will mention that Magical Realism is the genre I discovered my Dreamer’s Alliance series best fits in I honestly had never heard of the genre before trying to fit my books into Amazon’s tree. Still, I have nothing like “a library of infinite size” that’s my dream world.

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  15. I love all the magical/supernatural books by Ray Bradbury especially The Illustrated Man, where a bewitched man’s tattoos come to life. I’ve enjoyed Haruki Murakami and Jeanette Winterson magical realism also. I understand the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Han Kang, dabbles in this genre as well; however, I haven’t read any of her books since a majority of reviews suggest they are very sad. Nice theme Dave. Love Misty’s encounter with a ghost. The tail (tale) says it all. Ha. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi, for those great mentions of other esteemed authors who have done at least some writing with supernatural elements! Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” also comes to mind.

      Yes, cat tails are QUITE expressive. They are mood barometers. 🙂

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  18. Hi Dave. I love magical realism! It’s the genre of the novels and short stories that I write, plus I mix some science in there, too. I loved Rose Madder, Jane Eyre, The House of Spirits, Harry Potter. Had not heard about the Matchmaker. It’s going on my list! Thank you.

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  19. Yet another excellent topic, Dave, and I can’t do better than ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie. I’ve read most of his books and am currently embarked on his latest offering, ‘Knife’, the factual account of his life immediately before and after his stabbing. ‘Midnight’s Children’ is I’m sure the best–even if it wasn’t the Booker of Bookers–with the children born at midnight as India gained its independence having special powers. More recently, and ever willing to help out a fellow indie author, may I mention the ‘Rapid Eye Movement’ series by my friend Amanda Sheridan? Her protagonist Jennifer lives a normal life in Cyprus, to where she’d relocated and is running a successful busines as well as meeting the man of her dreams. One car accident later she’d experiencing vivid dreams, like an ongoing TV series in her head with her living vividly as another woman. Meanwhile, in Yorkshire, UK, Lucy is also living a successful life–but then begins to have dream-sequences like Jennifer’s. They’ve never met, but they appear to be living each other’s lives in their dreams. Nuff said – but Amanda has turned the story into a four-book series (without any cliffhangers, so you aren’t obliged to read the next book). It’s not the sort of thing I can write–my stories all have their feet very much on the ground, I hope–but I admire those who can. Thanks once more for the workout of my grey matter. 🙂

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  22. Misty is pretty nonchalant about seeing the ghost. My dogs would have been straining on the leash to attack it! Neil Gaiman is good at writing regular everyday stories and then throwing in something paranormal, sometimes when you least expect it.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! Ha! 😂 Yes, Misty is blasé about that ghost. Sees it every October. 🙂 The ghost is grateful no dogs were around. 🙂

      Neil Gaiman is a great mention! His “American Gods” certainly has that everyday/not-everyday mix!

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