Magic Realism, as a genre, has lost some of the allure that it once held. Because of the success of its major contributors (Borges, Marquez, Murakami, et al) a host of imitators have been attempting to pass off what are essentially romance novels disguised in flowery prose. Then comes along The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia pushing all of the imitators through the door, out the window - it stands alone gleaming on a pedestal. What he has done is nothing less than to recreate the genre and save it from itself. By carefully straddling the border between the real world and the world of his book he has put the magic back into Magic Realism and created something that could be called science fiction if the nature of the story were different.
What grounds it firmly in the form, however, is the subject matter. The People of Paper is magnificent and not nearly as confounding or intimidating as it seems at first glance. A quick flip through the book reveals large columns of text completely blacked out, words with lines dashed through them, even holes cut in the paper so as to carefully conceal the name of Plascencia's former lover. This chaos is derived from his semi-biographical (we assume) melancholy but the themes are ultimately universal. One simply has to be able to see how people made of paper and mechanical turtles are representative of the pain and loss of love. It's not an easy leap but it is a satisfying one once you've landed.
Plascencia's characters are all on their own separate journeys to repair their broken hearts, and they are all keenly aware of his presence as the god of their world, represented in the text as Saturn. Joining his loss with his characters, giving himself control over this world full of sympathetic characters, he's God. So they blame him for their problems, becoming drawn into a larger sub-textual debate over fate and free-will. A group of migrant farmers, lead by Frederico de la Fey begin "the war on omniscient narration (a.k.a. the war against the commodification of sadness)."
As this 'war' continues, the outside narrative of Plascencia's (Saturn's) world begins to mirror theirs, to intertwine with it, as the sky in the novel's world begins to literally crack and fall to the ground. The more control he loses, the more rebellious they become. But is he just writing his characters this way or are they taking his power away, taking control of their fate? That's the real question of the book and the meaty stuff of life's meaning fills in the gaps. The fight against Saturn-As-God, the surrogate cause of all their pain and suffering, represents each character's (and our own) battles with the loss of true love and the temporal existence of happiness - like skin made of paper dissolving in the rain.
Plascencia turns this quest of healing into a remarkable and rich world that neither loses its sense of reality nor seems entirely like our own. His sense of humor and his ability to gently wring new meaning out of old forms and phrases makes every step of The People of Paper a refreshing experience - and one that is more rewarding with repeated reading.
Plascencia turns this quest of healing into a remarkable and rich world that neither loses its sense of reality nor seems entirely like our own. His sense of humor and his ability to gently wring new meaning out of old forms and phrases makes every step of The People of Paper a refreshing experience - and one that is more rewarding with repeated reading.
