The Magic of the Natural World

Many stories in the collection depict nature as having magical properties, and this treatment of natural animals, plants, and vegetables as magical works to defamiliarize the familiar world we all live in and create a surreal world in which the stories can operate. Sometimes the natural world is anthropomorphized, other times it is used in a spell to create magic, but rarely is the natural world depicted as anything ordinary or humdrum.

Anthropomorphized animals play a major part in a large majority of the stories. Human characters are constantly befriending talking hyenas, horses, birds, and cats. In “The Debutante,” the young narrator’s dearest friend is a hyena. In “The Oval Lady” Lucretia’s best friend is a rocking horse that comes alive. The narrator of “Uncle Sam Carrington” befriends a horse she meets in the woods. The narrator of “The...