Hopkinson, Nalo: The New Moon's Arms
The New Moon's Arms (2007)
Written by: Nalo Hopkinson
Genre: Fantasy/Magical Realism
Pages: 323 (Hardcover)
Why I Read It: The New Moon's Arms has popped up a couple of times in the book club polls, and it's never quite won (but it's come close!). I don't know what possessed me to give it a shot now since it's been on my shelf for a while, but other than a short story or two, I've never read Hopkinson, and I've always been meaning to. This seemed like a good place to start.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: THE NEW MOON'S ARMS is a mainstream magical realism novel set in the Caribbean on the fictional island of Dolorosse. Calamity, born Chastity, has renamed herself in a way she feels is most fitting.
She's a 50-something grandmother whose mother disappeared when she was a teenager and whose father has just passed away as she begins menopause. With this physical change of life comes a return of a special power for finding lost things, something she hasn't been able to do since childhood. A little tingling in the hands then a massive hotflash, and suddenly objects, even whole buildings, lost to her since childhood begin showing up around Calamity.
One of the lost things Calamity recovers is a small boy who washes up on the shore outside her house after a rainstorm. She takes this bruised but cheerful 4-year-old under her wing and grows attached to him, a process that awakens all the old memories, frustrations and mysteries around her own mother and father. She'll learn that this young boy's family is the most unusual group she's ever encountered -- and they want their son back.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: YAY. I wasn't going to spoil anything, but once I started writing about the book I realized I wanted to talk about the magic itself and what it meant, which means some form of spoilers. Sorry, folks, but you can always skip to "My Rating" and be safe and sound!
Would you believe that before reading, I'd really not paid attention to what this book was about? All I knew was that The New Moon's Arms was some kind of modern fantasy, and that was enough for me. Imagine my surprise to learn that really, what I was getting was a piece of magical realism, and this particular kind of magical realism is such that the magic is so subtle that in some cases, you can interpret it how you want (aka: is it REALLY magic or is something more realistic going on?). Other cases, like what was triggered by Calamity's hot flashes, were more straight-forward, though for the life of me, I can't tell you what the overall point of that particular brand of magic was. Yes, I think it allowed her to find Agway and then provided her the kinds of things that he could play with during his sojourn there. But beyond that . . . ? For a while, I thought the reappearance of the grove and all of that would indicate a way for Calamity and the other islanders to sort of start their own business that wouldn't rely on cooperations, and while I still think that was hinted at, that was never resolved.
Also never resolved was my theory that Calamity's mother was a selkie. Well, the term selkie was never used, mind you, but what we learn later about the skins and how they operate and then the discovery of the one in the tree, well, I don't think her father killed her mother. I think her mother finally gave up and went home . . . minus her skin (which is as effective as dying, right? If she went back to the sea?). It would explain why Calamity had a touch of magic to her, that bit of webbing between two of her fingers. But all of these things are hinted at, and while the ending was rather definitive when Agway returns to the sea, there's a catch -- just a catch, mind you -- for a reader who wants to believe in metaphors instead of outright fantasy, and that, to me, seems like an integral part of magical realism (whether it's meant to be or not).
And truth be told, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed letting my brain work overtime in a realistic (though totally alien to me) setting that had just that touch of magic. Magic that was never explained or quantified, but rather magic that was just there, and the characters had to deal with it as it came.
Because the story isn't about the magic. It's about the characters and how, in some ways, the magic changes those characters. And really, when you narrow it down that way, the story's about Calamity, and how it changes her relationship to life and those who love her.
Let's be honest: Calamity isn't a very likable character. At first, part of my dislike was my inability to put an age on her. At the very start, I thought she was a little girl, and then she rapidly grew in my reader's eye while I read that first chapter, and that was slightly unsettling. And from then on, I never really had a grip on what she was about. Sometimes I really dug her no-nonsense attitude, and other times, she was just plain horrible. Her homophobia and the way she lashed it like a whip (or worse), and how that pushed away the people she loved. Her pride killed me. Still, it was worth seeing how hard she had to work to make any sort of headway with someone. Like the subplot with Evelyn, and learning how the two girls used to be friends, then were something more like enemies, and now, as adults, were learning how their younger selves influenced how they treated each other as adults. Then there was Calamity's relationship with her daughter, which was heartbreaking from the moment of conception all the way to the end, because I could sympathize with both mother and daughter, you know?
It seems to be the year of the middle-aged to elderly heroines for me. Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon, and now this. It's good to see a different side of the woman's experience put into an actual character and how that affects the story. This is such a story about Calamity, about all the different things that made her into the character she is today, and all the things about the present that shapes her into the character you hope she becomes in the future. Because Ife was right: there were times when I was utterly ashamed of Calamity, but because she was our POV character, I wanted to see her become a better person. I needed to see her become a better person and make the right decisions. Because if she hadn't, it would've been easy to feel like I'd wasted my time as a reader.
That said, I do wish she'd confided in her family about what Agway really was. After all, they witnessed random items falling out of nowhere, and the chestnut grove popping out of the same place. But maybe believing that Agway was a selkie would be too much, and then we would've had a very different ending, indeed.
My Rating: Good Read
It's a very character-driven book, with a magical realism bent that sometimes feels like outright fantasy, but treads the fine line between the two. To me, magical realism has a way of being surreal, whereas fantasy in and of itself is more outright and obvious. So that's what I mean when I say the book treads the line between the two. At times, the magic felt utterly surreal, and other times, it was blatant, and no one ever questioned what was happening. Still, the heart of this book is Calamity and her struggles with finding her place in her home, her family, and even her community, despite all the turmoil she faces (a lot of which she creates herself). This was, for the most part, a very smooth read for me, though I did start out rather confused about Calamity's age, which sometimes made it hard to get a solid picture of her in my head. No matter, the voice is great (though a bit jarring -- that being said, I'd love to hear Hopkinson read this aloud), it's a creepily enchanting read. The folktale sections tie in nicely to the magic on the page, and while the book does just rather stop, it stops on a note that you think, and hope, that things are finally moving in the right direction. I'm glad I gave this a shot.
Cover Commentary: I've always loved this cover. It's very colorful and I love the ghosted image of the face in the background, though now that I've read the story, I'm not sure who the face belongs to. But having read the story makes me notice more details on the cover, like the dump truck, which is a great touch.
Next up: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper