6/8/2023 0 Comments Venous hum suzette mayr![]() ![]() ![]() Yet, this juxtaposition is a "source of anxiety" in horror fiction, while magic realism "normalizes the supernatural" (3, 4). As Christopher Warnes advances, magic realist narratives sometimes resemble works of horror fiction when the latter make "coherent use of codes of the natural and the supernatural" (2). It is true that vampires and cannibals usually intervene as gothic or horror literary figures, but I read their presence in Venous Hum as magic realist because they are not terrifying. Despite Chakraborty's mention that the intervention of these monstrous figures prevents the full development of the satire, I argue that Mayr's use of magic realism is central to the novel because it intensifies her thorough critique of Canadian nationalism. While Venous Hum operates as a high school reunion novel that revisits the impact of homophobia and racism on the protagonist, Lai Fun, Mayr's novel also deploys vampires and cannibals. In a review of Suzette Mayr's Venous Hum, Mridula Chakraborty laments that the Alberta novel, which satirizes a number of assumptions concerning racial, sexual, regional, and national identities, is ruined by Mayr's "unexpected, and completely unnecessary, horror pin" (36). ![]()
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