The Frequency of Magic

by Anthony Joseph

Raphael is a would-be author, but there have been so many distractions to the novel he has been writing for forty-one years that many of the characters have lost patience and gone off to do their own thing...but somehow, miraculously, the novel seems to write itself. The Frequency of Magic traverses an array of lives connected to the village of Million Hills. There’s the speculative imagination of Luke’s travels through mythic landscapes pursued by his nemesis, the carnival figure of the Great Bandit. There’s the psychological odysseys of the musician, a jazz saxophonist, and Ella, an actor, both long separated from Million Hills, working their ways across the USA and Europe. When the paths of these exiles cross, a love affair begins. Time in this richly ambitious novel is both circular and simultaneous, but moving, as Raphael ages, towards a sense of dissolution both of persons and of the culture of the village. Above all, there is Raphael’s belief that in the making of his fiction, however messy and disobedient its materials, art can both challenge the destructive passage of time and make us see reality afresh.

Genres: Fiction

306 pages, Paperback

Published March 12, 2020

Reviews

[Rol-J Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to rate, because the book is somewhat esoteric, and having studied Kitch and Sonnets for Albert, I think I can appreciate Joseph's style of writing. Frequency of Magic is a novel, written in 100 chapters of 1000 words each that tells the story of Raphael the butcher/wannabe-writer who has taken 41 years to write his novel. It is predominantly set in humble Caribbean scenes, demonstrating the domesticities and simplicities of the lives of Raphael and the many other characters. The novel shows the development of the characters that end up in Raphael's novel, 41 years in the making. Equally, it shows the distractions of life and their impacts on the literary process, and creative processes, in general. It opens, like a raw sore, the vices of ordinary and not-so-ordinary village folk; it embraces sex, sexuality and sensuality as much as it rebukes them, particularly in their violent forms. It exposes grooming, cat calling and the resilience of women who are not immune from the indiscretions and overestimations of men (there is an obsession with the jocking of pricks). I was also intrigued by the spiritual and superstitious aspects of the novel, particularly the presence (or omnipresence) of the Great Bandit. Joseph does a beautiful job of laying out the landscape of post-colonial Trinidad (marked by the mention of the Post-Colonial Hospital, which later became the Port of Spain General), and at times, I had to make use of Allsop's Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage to fully understand the many examples of symbolism throughout the novel. This novel definitely requires a high level of local and situational awareness to get past the esoteric parts.
However, I was not enthralled by this novel as I was for Kitch or even his poetry collection Sonnets for Albert because the novel just seemed so discursive. I listened to the audiobook and wrote extensive notes on each chapter. I had to create mind maps to link chapters and characters and I think that did the novel a disservice. Understandably, Joseph's background probably made it difficult for him to escape discursion via a poetic style of writing, but I think better connections between the chapters and maybe even less chapters would have served the novel better.

3.5/5, but not bad enough to get a 3/5 rating on Goodreads.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imaginative, poetic, rich, challenging, and non-conventional. The writing is exquisite and tantalizing. Joseph engages in Trinidadian history and cultural with frankness, especially the relationship between men and women and church and community. As a work set mostly in the Caribbean, Joseph details aspects of the cultural with rawness and humor dousing the text with southern Caribbean phrases. I learned some new words and phrases for true!! In addition, Joseph highlights the history of movement by Caribbean peoples. Within this, Joseph stipulates that Caribbean peoples carry their cultures everywhere and enhance metropolitan spaces in the west. This is a challenging work, but worth the reading.

[Francesca Morosini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very poetically written, ambitious novel. I loved the premise but I found it difficult to follow the various characters or really understand what was going on. It's definitely a book that needs to be carefully and closely read. It seems like the sort of book that some people will really love and I'm almost disappointed I didn't "get it" more.