Magic Street by Orson Scott Card

Fantasy/Fiction. Hardback from Del Ray. Published in 2005. On loan from Kent District Library, Cascade Branch.

In a previous book, Enchantment, Card added to the story of Sleeping Beauty. In Magic Street Fairy characters from Shakespeare's plays moved forward to today's world are the foundation on which he built this story.

I appreciate that Orson Scott Card does not discount God in his stories, nor does he make those who are believers all the "bad guys" as is often found in this genre. (Not that I am saying that believers have not been the bad guys plenty of times in real life, but that it is nice to find a book that knows that believers can be good, too.)

Publisher's summary:
Orson Scott Card has the distinction of having swept both the Hugo and Nebula awards in two consecutive years with his amazing novels Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. For a body of work that ranges from science fiction to nonfiction to plays, Card has been recognized as an author who provides vivid, colorful glimpses between the world we know and worlds we can only imagine.

In a peaceful, prosperous African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family–a boy who is at once surrounded by boisterous characters and deeply alone. But while Mack senses that he is different from most, and knows that he has strange powers, he cannot possibly understand how unusual he is until the day he sees, in a thin slice of space, a narrow house. Beyond it is a backyard–and an entryway into an extraordinary world stretching off into an exotic distance of geography, history, and magic.

Passing through the skinny house that no one else can see, Mack is plunged into a realm where time and reality are skewed, a place where what Mack does and sees seem to have strange affects in the “real world” of concrete, cars, commerce, and conflict. Growing into a tall, powerful young man, pursuing a forbidden relationship, and using Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream as a guide into the vast, timeless fantasy world, Mack becomes a player in an epic drama. Understanding this drama is Mack’s challenge. His reward, if he can survive the trip, is discovering not only who he really is . . . but why he exists.

Both a novel of constantly surprising entertainment and a tale of breathtaking literary power, Magic Street is a masterwork from a supremely gifted, utterly original American writer–a novel that uses realism and fantasy to delight, challenge, and satisfy on the most profound levels.

To buy from amazon.co.uk, click here: Magic Street
from amazon.com, click here: Magic Street