Seeing George (Cassandra Austin, Knopf, $29.95, ISBN 1740512936, November)

This review gives the game away so don’t read on if you want to be surprised by the twist in Seeing George’s tale. That said, readers discover relatively early that Seeing George is about a woman who ‘sees’ a dragon—a green- and purple-scaled Irish sea dragon no less—where other characters see a man. The chapters of this slim, square volume alternate between the present day and the 1950s when Violet first met George as a young, newly wed bride. Presumably designed to appeal to readers of Wicked (Gregory Macquire, HarperCollins), and Angela Carter fans everywhere, Seeing George belongs to that increasingly popular subgenre of realist fairy tales. However, the strength of Austin’s writing is definitely in the detailed account she offers of one woman’s ageing—and sickness and encroaching death—and its effects on her body, personality and marriage. Her relationship with her husband is genuinely loving and refreshingly intriguing. In comparison, the fantastical element of the plot—including not only who/what George ‘really’ is, but what/who he is to Violet—is handled quite cursorily and perhaps not developed in depth enough for some readers.

Rose Michael is AB&P’s editor