Too Many Magpies by Elizabeth Baines is the second offering from Salt Publishing in the United Kingdom (their first being Tania Hershman's collection The White Road). Salt has a knack for beautiful book designs and quality writers, and Magpies, a quasi-modern fable based on an old magpie lullaby (one for sorrow, two for mirth), doesn't disappoint. The narrator, married to Richard, a nutritionist, and mother of two small children, 4-year-old Danny and toddler Sammy, finds herself crushed by postnatal depression and trapped in a worldview fostered by Richard that "knowledge of how things work is what helps to make them safe."
But when she meets "him" at an educational committee meeting, everything begins to change. "He" has bad teeth. He smokes and drinks constantly. He tells her of spells and magic as they drink beer at pubs and drive on winding roads. She lets Danny and Sammy indulge in sweets, much to Richard's dismay. And she, in turn, indulges on "him." But lest the book become a tome about the evils of science and the wonders of magic, the narrator finds that her son Danny begins to act strangely, that he is ill. Will magic or science cure him?
Baines divides Magpies in four "acts" corresponding to the magpie lullaby: for sorrow, for joy, for a secret, to be told. The novel is a wonderful conceit, full of shiny, lyrical language and sophisticated structure. Baines also has an understanding of the unraveled threads in the domestic fabric, and renders children, with their quixotic actions and broken syntax, very realistically. The only weakness in the book is between the main character and "him" (he is never named in the book). Although one can certainly see the premise of the main character falling for this edgy, dangerous man, it's a tough sell for the reader. After all, he is described as a walking vice: his poor dental work, his nicotine-stained fingers, his band of roving children from previous, open marriages. And we know why, in the conceit of the story, she must fall for him. But it's hard feel the attraction she has for him. Perhaps it is because the affair begins so quickly in the book; there is maybe a paragraph of her inner struggle regarding "his" worldview and her own before she concedes.
Or part of the problem may lie in Baines' language. It's lyrical and beautiful and moves like water over rocks, but there times I wanted it to be less about beautiful language and more about the earthy, sour carnal desire between these two leads. The book is a slim, quick read, and more character development may have helped Magpies feel less like a good idea and more like a good story.
It's something that Baines is certainly capable of, as evidenced by her depictions of Danny and Sammy. I just wish I knew more about "him" with the blue smoke, wished that husband Richard was more of a person, vulnerable and broken, than an opposing ideology (he describes the narrator's affair with "him" as "the unknown factor we always knew could occur," as if she is part of some marital equation and not a human being). Despite these limitations, Magpies is full of really wonderful imagery and a sense of magic and science as equally mysterious forces in our lives, not ones that necessarily need oppose. Perhaps, they could even be allies.—Jen Michalski