Norrie J, The Magic Carpet, (Indie:2019)
Link: Amazon, Goodreads. Price £9.99
London, 2016, and a community primary school sets its eight-year olds a project: to adapt a traditional fairy tale for the school festival. But this is not a united community. Adults and children with different ethnicities and backgrounds are struggling with all the problems with family life in an England that seems to be becoming increasingly hostile to anything they define as “foreign” (be they born in England or not.) Will the story of The Magic Carpet draw these families together or will the strands fall apart?
I would not normally have read this book. Why? First, the subject is just so damned worthy. Multi-ethnicity families struggling around the time that Brexit kicks off? I was bracing myself for 500 pages of shallow “racism is bad m’kay” that does more harm that good. Second, chapter by chapter change between the many different character’s PoV is an invitation to confusion, stereotype, and people you cannot even remember never mind follow.
I was wrong on every count. These are real families, with normal, family problems. You will recognise them. Each character has their own distinct voice – the children in particularly are superb. Their lives are riddled with conflict: performance at school, making friends, having a personal life as a single parent. You cannot help but empathise with and care about them because so much is what you have been through or known others go through.
The title is perfect, because each chapter reads like a particularly well-constructed short story that weaves together occasionally radically different perspectives of the same events. The author has drawn magnificently on her own experiences as a teacher to create real people, with realistic ethnic influences but for whom the fact that they are Punjabi or Somalian or whatever is in the background to whatever is actually going on in their lives. That is brilliant because it is true: the first step to overcoming racism is seeing more than ethnicity. The Magic Carpet is a wonderful story about real people struggling with just how hard it is to be a family. You will be gripped by every page.
