Grandfather’s Whispers, a novel by Stacy N. Elliott, examines in prose the burden that some of us bear through life. The novel is a magical realism story about Sarah, a seventeen-year-old girl, and her grandfather, Ralph. A group of raucous boys start off Sarah’s day by running her off the road into a snow bank. After this event, Sarah finds herself in two places: as a patient in an emergency situation and underneath a magical tree and pond with her deceased maternal grandfather.
In Grandfather’s Whispers, each leaf on the supernatural tree is a happy memory, transferring Sarah to a time in her life when she felt safe and joyful. Some memories show her the times leading up to her birth. Sarah sees her parents come together, she experiences an unusual baseball game, and revisits a delightful encounter with Santa Claus. Her grandfather also directs her to a nearby pond. When she sees her reflection, Sarah relives a dour or dangerous moment in her short life. Given Sarah’s parent’s rocky relationship, her father’s inability to keep a job, and her paternal grandmother’s instability, her life has many alarming experiences.
Sarah must live through them all, with hospital staff interrupting her peace. The narrative doesn’t make clear at first why Sarah is in the hospital, giving the present scenes and the tree visit encounters with her grandfather a sense of mystery. Sarah is allowed to view not only scenes of her own life, but her life’s effects on others. This novel idea brings home how important we are to other people, and how easily we forget this fact when we’re focused on ourselves.
Some passages are disorienting when we briefly jump to Ralph’s perspective, but overall the novel is written with skill, style, and much care. The narrative is immersive, and pages fly by as the reader is invested in Sarah and her future. This book is an ambitious undertaking for Elliott’s first novel.
Most fantasy offerings these days are urban fantasy or high fantasy, so it’s a delight to find a magical realism book like Grandfather’s Whispers. The story’s contrasts between real-life tragedies and an utopian, creative world blend seamlessly. This novel is recommended for people who enjoy the mix of hardcore reality with flights of fantasy.