[close]
We had just been talking recently at the library about magical realist novels (fiction that incorporates a magical element to an otherwise realistic story, but is not considered fantasy or sci-fi) and "The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope" is one we can add to this genre that includes novels such as "The Night Circus", "The Time Traveler's Wife", "The Alchemist", and "Chocolat" among others.
"Adam Hope" is part love story, part coming-of-age, part mystery, and part "women's fiction" (though in truth I've always hated that term...as if to suggest that only women should and do read a certain type of fiction about women.)This piece as it all...excellent writing by Riley, characters that the reader becomes invested in, and a story line that is just confusing enough to make you want to keep reading to find out the secrets. Though some readers were disappointed to discover that the ending still leaves some details unexplained, I didn't find that those unanswered questions took anything away from the story at all. Even though Adam is nothing like any person we've ever seen, his relationship with Evelyn is wholly human and one that we can empathize with. In fact by the end I started to wonder if Adam's "other worldliness" wasn't meant to be symbolic...is it not true of any of us that no matter how much we love someone there are things about them we will never understand? Do people not change over time, seemingly becoming different people to us?
