The Good Fairies of New York

The Good Fairies of New York
by Martin Millar

The Good Fairies of New York
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Book Summary Information

Author: Martin Millar
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-03
ISBN: 0765358549
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Tor Fantasy

Book Reviews of The Good Fairies of New York

Book Review: Real Men Read About Fairies
Summary: 5 Stars

That's right. I'm not ashamed to admit it in the least. I like stories about fairies. I'm not about to traipse off into the daisies looking for them anytime soon, mind you; but I'm a huge fan, nonetheless, and my wife still manages to consider me a braw hunk o' man, the Heid Bummer, as it were. She perhaps forgives me due to my Scotch-Irish heritage. And so when I find a new book about fairies, I tend to grab it without hesitation.

Long story short: I liked this story about fairies better than any I've ever read before.

Old-fashioned depictions of fairies, like those George MacDonald spun - and even the faux old-fashioned tales from Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman - are usually great fun to read (even if they make fairies out to be unfathomably more cruel and creepy than I think they ought). To me, the eerie mists of "faerie" have been long overdue for a right good blowout... and here along comes Heather and Morag, punked-out and ready to provide it!

What Martin Millar does in this book is nothing less than astounding. His rendering of current-day New York is seamless, for starters. He has that gift of all great writers for showing the whole by using the least part needed for his purpose. New York is the crucial backdrop to this tale. That "New Yorkness" is undeniable, permeating every page, and yet I never once as a reader thought anything like "here he goes again, describing something about New York". No. His prose weaves setting into plot with such deftness that I found myself absolutely transfixed. What a tapestry he created!

In his characterizations of the fairies Millar delivers to us a much more modern interpretation of their culture and personalities, greatly akin to what I find when reading Colfer's Artemis Fowl books. Yet Millar's fairies are still plenty old-fashioned enough to make the long-time fairy fan in me roundly applaud. He manages to appeal to many of the old tropes while making for us a fairy culture that still feels remarkably new and fresh.

Millar guides us into his world as seen through the wondering (but often bleary) eyes of the main two fairy protagonists, Heather and Morag. The perfection of their portrayals I can't even begin to describe. Suffice it to say that he does it exactly, wonderfully right. Millar then proceeds to gift us with a whole raft of other characters who become steadily more beautifully realized as the story progresses. Both fairy and human characters are rendered masterfully at every turn, with hardly a clichéd role or tired stereotype in sight. Or, at least, Millar is so adept at disguising such tactics that I neither noticed nor minded when I vaguely did.

There is a tension at the heart of the story - between the amazing magic that can be wrought by what's traditional and ancient and beautiful and right and governed by kindness and common sense and decency (and love, of course)... versus the modern notion of focusing on what's merely possible or impossible, just because your power can or can't make it so... and the miracles that can sometimes happen right in the midst of the struggle.

Of course this means that Millar's sense of irony is marvelously acute. He has an astounding ability to capture and depict the ironic with the lightest, subtlest of touches - which is really the only way irony works in literature, when the reader can manage to "get it" for him or herself, having been oh so gently and invisibly lead there by the author.

Then there's the background of music that suffuses the story. The strathspeys, the Dolls' solos, the pipes in Central Park. The structure of music, in terms of rhythm, repetition, motif... there are musical parallels throughout the book that resonate with a great deal of power by its end. What does that have to do with the commercials that Dinnie likes to watch? Or with the marching of Magenta in and out of the narrative, a cadence that is more and more prominent as time wears on? Or with the smashing of instruments, for that matter?

Let me just put it this way: by the book's last few scenes, the magic, the music, the love, the irony all crash splendidly together into a kind of literary harmony that I rarely see these days.

Finally, there's a blatant, yet organic, social-political stance being asserted in this book; but this story couldn't possibly have been told without it. Makes me wonder what came first for Millar - the polemic or the thistle fairies? I think, considering the masterpiece this is, that surely the sweet little rockers from Cruickshank got to him first. The attacks Millar launches come across at every turn like they couldn't help but bust out. Since he so deftly presents this urban American mess of ours as seen through the eyes of his tiny heroines - wise yet innocent (ignorant? naive?) - how such creatures seek to interpret our world is something Millar is practically bound by craft to dive into and richly explore.

To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, from the preface to Millar's astounding work, you'd better make sure you read it, then make your friends all read it, too.

(And did I mention that I've got a little fanboy crush? Don't tell my dear, sweet, tolerant wife, but Heather is the haws!) ;D

Summary of The Good Fairies of New York

Dinnie, an overweight enemy of humanity, was the worst violinist in New York, but was practicing gamely when two cute little fairies stumbled through his fourth-floor window and vomited on the carpet. . . .

When a pair of fugitive Scottish thistle fairies end up transplanted to Manhattan by mistake, both the Big Apple and the Little People have a lot of adjusting to do. Heather and Morag just want to start the first radical fairy punk rock band, but first they?ll have make a match between two highly unlikely sweethearts, start a street brawl between rival gangs of Italian, Chinese, and African fairies, help the ghost of a dead rocker track down his lost guitar, reclaim a rare triple-bloomed Welsh poppy from a bag lady with delusions of grandeur, disrupt a local community performance of A Midsummer Night?s Dream, and somehow manage to stay sober enough to save all of New York from an invasion of evil Cornish fairies.

If they can stop feuding with each other, that is.

A racy and irreverent novel by Martin Millar, winner of the World Fantasy Award.

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