THE PROSPECT OF MAGIC is a collection of linked stories about what happens in Fluker, Louisiana when a travelling carnival stops for a night and the ringmaster unexpectedly dies there, leaving the carnies attempting to make a permanent home in the small, Southern town.
The stories deal with both the carnies and locals alike as they try to understand what we all try to understand; the meanings of magic, family, and love.
You'll meet a magician, a lion tamer, a bearded lady and a tall man. You'll meet a mechanic, a high school history teacher, and a slew of kids just doing what kids do. Oh yeah, there is also an enormous cat, a mannequin-grandpa, and a family of bat people!
Above all things, Fluker is a place that you won't forget.
THE PROSPECT OF MAGIC won the 2009 Tartt's First Fiction Prize and is NOW AVAILABLE from Livingston Press.
Also now available online at Amazon and Barnes and Nobles
REVIEWS AND BLURBS:
Read full reviews in AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW, THE ADVOCATE, POPMATTERS and CHAPTER 16!
Walsh creates a world so vivid and mystical, he brings Louisiana to life in a way no one else has done before him.
--Reviewed by Julie Cantrell, Southern Literary Review
Walsh nails moving targets other writers know better than to attempt hitting.
--Reviewed by Matt Baker, American Book Review
Told from the perspective of locals and former carnies, these collected short stories offer an honest glimpse at ordinary longing and human failing set against a fantastic backdrop. From the bearded lady yearning for normalcy and companionship, to the restless housewife with the soul of an Arabian princess, each character is richly drawn, creating a series of loosely connected tales that are as emotionally complex as they are entertaining.
--Judges, 2011 Eric Hoffer Award
In his debut collection of connected stories, which manage to be both funny and deeply disturbing, M.O. Walsh (whose fiction has appeared in THE OXFORD AMERICAN) travels the inner lives of Fluker's citizens, the "normal" folks and the so-called "freaks," deciphering their tangled codes of longing like some sort of human whisperer. The beguiling Willy Wonka flourishes—a bearded lady, a sadistic lion tamer, a psychotic giant, a family of bat people, and a "potential-predicting" DNA machine, available at the supermarket like an ATM—belie Walsh's surgical command of far-messier materials, like crushed dreams, cruel urges, and crazy love.
The Prospect of Magic exposes so much more than the bearded ladies, lion tamers, bat people and giants that populate its pages. Walsh’s prose peels back the screen to reveal the trick behind the illusion of “us” and “them”, thereby unlocking the magic inside the soul of each of his characters. With a sleight-of-hand brand of storytelling that reaches into the recesses of the human psyche, Walsh pulls out our every forgotten fantasy and our deepest, darkest dreams and holds them up to our amusement, our awe and our applause.
--Reviewed by Christel Loar at Popmatters.com
"Lordy, M.O. Walsh can write! Sentence by sentence, character by character, story by story, his book is magical, as we must demand of any book purporting to be about the prospect of magic. It's been a long time since I read a book so satisfying. I wish I could write like this."
“Eventually the hard and fresh secrets of small-towners of un-Cajun Louisiana emerge no matter through what layer of carnival society. The title story, “The Prospect of Magic” is irreplaceable.”
--Barry Hannah, author of Ray, Geronimo Rex and Airships
"When I say Walsh is brutally funny, I mean it. He somehow elevates a moment of great comic absurdity to unspeakable tragedy. There's an equally tragic, philosophical detachment in here, as if God had a sense of humor, and Walsh figured out how to tap it. This is a powerful collection, a wonderful beginning for this young writer."
--Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
"The Prospect of Magic is as powerful a collection of linked stories as you will find. Revolving around the refugees of a belly-up carnival stranded in the town of Fluker, Louisiana, the stories are about bearded women, deranged lion tamers, circus freaks. They’re also about fathers and sons, husbands and wives. Walsh blends surreal elements with big portions of humor and earned sentiment, all of it born of a blazing imagination and leavened by a view of the world that is somehow hard-eyed and hopeful at the same time. A truly auspicious debut."
--Michael Knight, author of Goodnight, Nobody, Diving Rod, and The Holiday Season
“What makes this such a terrific story is the depth both of its sense of humor and of its humanity. Most writers who can pull off the funny scene, the wisecrack, the absurd tableaux, content themselves with that ability. But Mr. Walsh doesn’t confine himself simply to moments that made me laugh out loud (which I don’t often do when reading a story). Rather, he has in this story infused the comedy with a true sense of pathos, of our folly and our triumph, and the necessary reckoning of ourselves to our failures. This is a fine story, moving, and hilarious, and true.”
--Bret Lott, author of Jewel, on the title story “The Prospect of Magic”
