By Claire Messud
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
Only in the years following my French Catholic grandmother's death was it revealed to me that there is no such thing as 'magical realism.' There are, instead, culturally specific experiences of the real which, when rendered in fiction, produce different results. Raised in an essentially Protestant setting, I had in youth absorbed, unawares, an essentially Protestant understanding of the world: one that strives for a rational grasp of events, one that espouses clarity, directness, and mastery. In fiction, this leads to largely linear narrative, in which the lines between cause and effect can be clearly traced, and in which, in spite of welcome complexity, there remains an underlying certainty of limits, boundaries, and order.
