cover image Photographing Fairies

Photographing Fairies

Steve Szilagui. Ballantine Books, $18 (321pp) ISBN 978-0-345-37751-7

Haunting, beautifully written, offbeat and convincing, this first novel is set in England during the 1920s, when the art of photography was young. Szilagyi's protagonist is American portrait photographer Charles Castle, who is about to be hanged for a murder he did not commit. Castle narrates a mesmerizing tale of how he was enlisted by the eccentric author, parapsychologist and spirit photographer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his crusade to make the world believe in fairies, and chronicles his gradual transformation from total skeptic to one convinced that spirits exist. Aiding Castle in tracking down and photographing the creatures are two seemingly innocent yet menacing young girls, both gifted with the ability to see the fairies in a garden owned by their syphilitic father. Gypsies, burglars, adulterers, a loudmouthed British constable who has his own set of purported fairy photographs and a minister who writhes stark naked in a moonlit garden as fairies dance on his skin are elements in a quest that hurtles Castle toward a prison cell even while he tries to communicate with quicksilver sprites. A gossamer delight, anchored with sharp humor and pulsing with the tension of a detective novel, this magical debut will keep readers absorbed right up to its moving final pages. (July)