One story I never tire of reading—indeed, it affects me ever more deeply as I age—is “A Stone Woman” by A. S. Byatt, a wondrous example of magic realism. The story concerns Ines, an elderly woman who, after her mother’s death, confronts not only the grief brought on by that profound loss but also by her own aging and the peculiar sense that the last barrier to her death has fallen away. The story’s heart is an exploration of the psychology of aging and facing death, or, quoting Byatt, “the way the body intrudes increasingly as it goes about its dying.”
Broadly defined, magic realism is a story in which a detailed, realistic setting merges with the irreal. The most successful magic realist stories deploy certain strategies; “A Stone Woman” presents a case study in which to examine these strategies.
Above all, the “magic” shouldn’t be used merely for effect—it must underpin the character’s psychological metamorphosis. The central supernatural element here is Ines’s transformation from flesh to stone, which functions as a metaphor both for the bodily changes that occur with aging and the ultimate transfiguration from life to death.
Structurally speaking, magic realists can either establish the magic up front and then continue as if all other laws of realism apply or begin with the ordinary and proceed to the extraordinary. Byatt chooses the latter method: a conventionally linear story that moves gradually away from the ordinary. She opens (confidently) with, “At first she did not think of stones,” a matter-of-fact sentence that only in retrospect hints of something strange afoot. Lavished in concrete details—an older woman tending to her mother’s death, her job, and her own aging—the story fools us into believing a realistic story will unfold. That is, until the first inkling that Ines’s body is becoming decidedly unflesh-like.
Little by little, we understand that Ines is turning into stone. Engaged in the world Byatt has created, we suspend disbelief and follow Ines on her mission to find a place where she can rest after she completely solidifies. She discovers an old graveyard where the sculptor/stonecutter, Thorsteinn, lives. Their friendship builds in increasingly spellbinding scenes that culminate in Ines finding the courage to unveil her stony body:
Hot liquid rose to the sills of her eyes and clattered in pearly drops on her ruddy hematite cheeks. He stared.Here, human psychology—Ines’s need to be seen for who she is but fearful of revealing herself—grounds the magic in realism.
She thought, He is a man, and he sees me as I am, a monster.
“Beautiful,” he said. “Grown, not crafted.”
Finally, recalling that magic shouldn’t be exploited merely for effect, ghosts ought to appear “human.” Byatt concludes with the most supernatural (but inevitable) scene of all, when in death, Ines joins her fellow stone women “spinning and bowing in a rapid dance on huge, lithe, stony legs, beckoning with expansive gestures, flinging their great wide arms in invitation.”
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Cynthia Reeves is the author of three books: the novel The Last Whaler (Regal House Publishing, 2024); the novel in stories Falling Through the New World (2024), winner of Gold Wake Press’s 2023 Spring Fiction Award; and the novella Badlands (2007), winner of Miami University Press’s Novella Prize. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared widely. Most recently, her short story “The Last Glacier” was included in If the Storm Clears (Blue Cactus Press, 2024), an anthology of speculative literature that concerns the sublime in the natural world. A Hawthornden Fellow, Cynthia has also been awarded residencies to the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition, Vermont Studio Center, Galleri Svalbard, and Art & Science in the Field. She taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr and Rosemont Colleges, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson’s low-residency program. In August 2024, she will circumnavigate Svalbard aboard an icebreaker carrying a hundred artists, scientists, and crew.
Find out more at cynthiareeveswriter.com.
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