Magical Realism in the UK

Since I first read Gunter Grass' brilliant mad dwarf chronicle The Tin Drum, Magical Realism has become one of my favourite genres to read. In Magical Realism the wackiest ideas sit alongside narratives that are usually important historical and cultural chronicles, meaning you get to read some fantastic ideas and at the same time learn a lot about the particular country or time period in which the story is set. It got me to wondering if the UK was a setting that would lend itself to the genre. To me the UK never seemed magical enough, but that might just be because I was born and raised here (apart from a few years in Holland) and so the red phone boxes and fish and chips just seem completely run of the mill. So I set about the task sometime last year, struggled a bit to keep the pace up, stopped in November to write my novel, and just recently got back into Magical Realism, while reading The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie, and decided to finish my story.

Now I think I'm left with a prime piece of English Magical Realism. There's still a bit of editing to do, but I've got a story about a Cornish giant who wrestles his way up the country to fame and notoriety in the fifteenth century, before becoming a lieutenant to Richard III and fighting in the Battle of Bosworth. In the present day he's dead and buried in the Atlantic Ocean, but something's rumbling off the Cornish coast... I think it's pretty good, and when it's finished I'm going to do my damnedest to get it published.