(courtesy Hachette Australia)
When you think about it, Christmas as a concept and an idea, as opposed to the reality of the season, is full to the tinsel-draped, eggnog-soaked brim with magical realism.
It’s in the original Biblical tale – not a diss; I grew up in the church and much of what occurs in the story of Jesus’ birth is demonstrably beyond the realm of day-to-day human experience – it’s in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and its many, many adaptations, and it’s in the wish fulfilment contentment of many Christmas rom-coms, in whatever medium they are told.
What is rather clever and imaginatively enjoyable about Ali McNamara’s It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square is that it takes the happily ubiquitous presence of magical realism in festive storytelling and absolutely and enthrallingly runs with it, offering up a tale where the usual redemptive healing tropes are observed and the happy ever after boxes are ticked but with an approach so out of the usual box that you will more than joyfully go along with some truly audacious narrative twists and turns.
And It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square does take some rather breathtaking bends in the storytelling road.
To say much more than that is going to be tricky because so much of the story revolves around thrillingly but quietly inventive and emotionally thoughtful departures from the everyday, the exact nature of which is never fully explained though the book is all the better for that approach.
I shiver and blink a few times, then I rub my eyes, but nothing changes.
Except everything has. Everything is different.
‘Watch,’ I hear Estelle say next to me as I open my mouth to question what I’m seeing. “This is where our story begins …’
What we can say without a troop of vengeful, sharpened candy cane wielding elves coming after us with deadly sugary intent is that It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square centres around Elle (aka Noelle, of course), a woman who, in common, with many of the protagonists in Christmas romcoms has just had the existential rug pulled out from under her entire life.
She has no job, no real forward momentum and thanks to the dastardly act of the significant other in her life, no place to live and as she sits on the bank of the Thames, at a well-known place for people to commit suicide – unfortunate placement only; she has no intention of ending her life but she has to admit her location would suggest that’s precisely what’s planned – it looks like she has nowhere left to go … and right near Christmas too.
Following a rather mysterious conversation with a bowler-hatted gent in a three-piece suit, Elle finds a job, in a newspaper no less, for a writer to take down the history of an centuries-old Georgian house in a rather tony part of London known as Mistletoe Square where she meets 100-year-old Estelle and her close friend and housekeeper Angela.
These two women, who have been friends and living companions since the 1960s when the house was already 210 years old, want Elle to listen to stories of the family who have continuously inhabited the home since 1750 and to write them down so they are not lost to history.
(courtesy official author page)
Elle is more than happy to oblige, and is even more delighted when the next door neighbour is a handsome lawyer called Ben (aka Ebeneezer, of course) who naturally enough is just what Elle needs and vice versa.
All the ingredients are there for a pleasingly contented found family take on Christmas, and while that does happen, it happens in the most breathtakingly imaginative way possible.
Again, to say any more would be to rob you of the joy of discovery but let’s just say that It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square takes a pile of expected and nicely arranged pieces and puts them together in a way that will give you all of the Dickensian vibes you could ask for.
So well does it do this while keeping its two protagonists neatly and happily grounded that you will stop every so often to marvel at how McNamara manages to insert so much magical realism into the tale while keeping everything feeling rawly emotional and epiphanic as any great redemptive tale of Christmas must surely be.
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to have all your ideas of the season or a genre completely upended in ways that pay homage to while comprehensively reinventing it then dive deep into It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square which seizes your heart even as it dazzles and enthralls your imagination.
This is Christmas as we want it to be – big, amazing, expansive and redemptively possible but also small and intimate and soul-searchingly real.
‘Is that it then?’ I [Elle] ask as Angela helps Estelle up. ‘Is that all of the house’s stories now that we’ve reached the two of you?’
‘Oh, no, dear,’ Estelle says, looking down at me. ‘Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve, the most magical night of all. When the moon shines through the window tomorrow, I will be telling you both the most important stories of all.’
The fact that McNamara is able to keep things feeling so emotionally and honestly impactful while filling the story with magical possibility is a marvel.
Very much like Dickens who spins a delightfully out-there story while never losing sight of the beatingly impactful humanity within, McNamara takes us on quite the magical real journey while also keeping the innate humanity of Elle and Ben front and centre.
These are two people who have suffered a great deal, and while the idea that they will all that healed and their lives sent on a new and forever happy-ever-after path is a joy, we are not allowed to forget, and this matters because where they have been deeply affects where they are going, It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square never loses sight of the pain that has led them to this point.
Magical realism is a lovely thing, especially when it’s done as brilliantly well as McNamara manages, but it only really works, dazzling though it is, when it addresses very real pain and loss and brokenness.
Think about all the Christmas stories you’ve read, including the original Biblical tale – every single one of those tales pivot on the pain of flawed and broken humanity and how greatly in need of healing the central characters are.
It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square never once loses sight of this, and as Estelle and Angela’s remarkable past, and that of their predecessors, comes vividly and immersively alive, we are treated to a redemptive festive tale like no other, one that will stay with you because, while it is all imaginatively fecund and vibrantly formed, it is rooted in the very stuff of who people are which makes what happens to Elle and Ben all the more meaningful.