With a tag line like that, you KNOW I had to say YES to doing a book review on Magel's Daughter!
Synopsis: Everyone in the Olina family, living and dead, knows the family secret: Magel keeps human body parts in her freezer. The old Hotpoint has stood against the back wall of the single car garage since 1950. The garage floor is polished concrete-not a tire tread or drop of oil has touched it. Magel keeps it as clean as a morgue, and whenever a family member loses a body part-adenoids, gallstones, or severed fingers-there is always a place for it in the depths of her freezer. Magel saves everything: newspapers, wrapping paper, baby teeth, etc., and the story has fun with the hoarding issue.
The story follows Karin Brix,who is in her last days of sanity-and it's all her mother's fault. Karin is on her way to becoming just like her, struggling to re-gain herself as an artist after years of raising her two sons. She is accompanied in her break from reality by the hallucinations, or perhaps specters of her grandmother and great-grandmother, who've haunted her since their deaths. Her mother, Magel, is the reigning matriarch of the family of Norwegian heritage, and is vividly depicted in the subtle way that is Scandinavian.
Magel is a classic femme fatale who grows old and spoils everyone's lives, just like her mother and her mother before her. This dark comedy, laced with magical realism, is all set in rural Northern Minnesota, and is a chilly world of hallucination, incest, and severed heads-there is more in the freezer than saved parts removed in surgery. Karin's father's glass eye, weaves through her imagination, as the only sound counsel amid the chaos. The fast-paced story resounds with notes of Norwegian mythology.
About the Author: This is Nancy's first published novel! She has already finished her third novel,Island Adrift, the first in The Mac Booksseries. She holds a BFA from the College of Art and Design in Minneapolis and worked in graphic design for ten years. At the same time she took night classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis,Minnesota, and has been writing ever since. She is married and the mother of four children who supply her with endless material.
Having Norwegian ancestry, I found the book very interesting. For those who might find it too hard to keep up with, you can skim over it and not loose the modern story line- but it does help to explain and further the story line.
If you are looking for a book that you can't put down and makes you happy YOUR family is not THIS weird, this is the book! Seriously- I laughed out loud alot while reading this book! If you're looking for something to vary your typical reading pattern, this is THE book! I highly recommend it!
Watch for the Sequel: Magel's Ghost continues the story of Karin as she re-locates to
Minneapolis, and follows the characters caught in Karin's web. Her quest for power in
the art community, involves her with the grandfather, father, and son of a wealthy
Minneapolis family. The ripple effect of her destructive psychosis is hilarious.
Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book, free of charge, from the author, via Bostick Communications, for review purposes. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it either.
Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book, free of charge, from the author, via Bostick Communications, for review purposes. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it either.