SOURCE: “Middlewatch as Magic Realism,” in Canadian Literature, No. 92, Spring, 1982, pp. 10-21.

In the following essay, Maillard discusses magic realist elements in Susan Kerslake's novel Middlewatch.

I read Susan Kerslake's first novel, Middlewatch,¹ in the spring of 1977. I found it a book not without minor flaws. Kerslake's fragile style, depending for effect upon juxtaposition of intense lyricism with a simple, folkloric narrative line, was a difficult one to control, and she faltered occasionally. But, after finishing the book, I was ready to forgive her anything. Wisps of Middlewatch persisted at the back of my mind for years—the magical shimmer of the writing, the resonance, the sheer importance of what was being said in such a quiet way. For me Kerslake had “that voice,” as Michael Ondaatje wrote of Márquez, “whose greatest power is that we trust it.”²

Shortly after I read Middlewatch, I discovered that I...