{"id":769,"date":"2022-11-18T19:54:15","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T19:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=769"},"modified":"2022-11-18T19:54:15","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T19:54:15","slug":"magic-but-not-magical-review-of-sacha-bissonnettes-the-magician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2022\/11\/18\/magic-but-not-magical-review-of-sacha-bissonnettes-the-magician\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cmagic, but not magical\u201d: review of Sacha Bissonnette\u2019s \u201cThe Magician\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

reviewed by Isaac Fox<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Image from Jellyfish Review<\/em>; original photograph by Rian Castillo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Sacha Bissonnette\u2019s flash story \u201cThe Magician,\u201d which appeared in Jellyfish Review<\/em> on October 27, centers around a man who learns magic from a book found in a storage locker so he can transfer his spouse\u2019s consciousness to another body. The piece is even more disorienting than its premise.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the tradition of magic realism and low fantasy, Bissonnette grounds his story\u2019s unreal elements in a grimy world of Arizona dust and Storage Wars<\/em> references. This adds a layer of doubt to the piece: up until the final moments, when the narrator successfully transfers his significant other\u2019s consciousness to someone else\u2019s body, many readers will question whether he can actually do it and whether this world has any magic. That layer of doubt\u2014along with the wild aesthetic contrast between Storage Wars<\/em> and body swapping\u2014also contributes to the piece\u2019s disorienting effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

The narrator\u2019s spouse wants to live in another body because hers is a constant reminder of trauma. She has a scar across her stomach from a C-section performed to deliver a baby that quickly passed away. The scar makes her feel disoriented in her own body, and that disorientation is reflected in the piece\u2019s aforementioned layers of doubt and contrast, its surreal plotline, and even Bissonnette\u2019s prose. The story\u2019s dialogue is set off in italics, with no dialogue tags (but only about half the time; the rest of the dialogue has tags, but no italics or quotation marks). There are multiple time jumps that feel rather abrupt. And at one point, the perspective even changes slightly: instead of speaking to his partner in second person, the narrator suddenly refers to her in third.<\/span><\/p>\n

The narrator\u2014who thinks about his spouse\u2019s body in terms of \u201c[his] use\u201d\u2014has little empathy for her, agreeing to learn the spell only so she won\u2019t break up with him. However, he, too, gets to feel a bit of her disorientation. In the piece\u2019s final lines, he reflects on how he\u2019s done something \u201cmagic, but not magical\u201d\u2014not in the way his childhood trip to Disney World was magical. And then he begins to doubt even his own reflections on the experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

This nameless character does think about ethics in everyday life\u2014as displayed in a comment about \u201cprivileged girls\u201d that shows more than a little resentment toward his partner\u2014but the way he thinks about her is quite reductionist. In those confused final lines, he is beginning to engage with the moral complexity of what he\u2019s done, but in his own limited and limiting terms.<\/span><\/p>\n

The narrator of \u201cThe Magician\u201d occupies an odd place in the piece because he\u2019s telling a story that isn\u2019t really his. This indirect use of perspective adds yet another layer of disorientation to Bissonnette\u2019s funhouse mirror of a flash piece.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jellyfish Review<\/em> <\/a>publishes two new pieces of flash fiction each week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. When he\u2019s not reading or writing something assigned, he\u2019s probably reading or writing something unassigned. His prose, reviews, and photography have appeared in <\/span>Tiny Molecules<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Rune Bear<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Heart of Flesh<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Green Blotter,<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Rejection Letters<\/span><\/i>. You can find him on Twitter at @isaac_k_fox.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewed by Isaac Fox Sacha Bissonnette\u2019s flash story \u201cThe Magician,\u201d which appeared in Jellyfish Review on October 27, centers around a man who learns magic from a book found in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,3,5],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-flash-fiction","tag-isaac-fox","tag-micro-review","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}