We meet Xavier on the first anniversary of the death of his wife, Nya, one of those unhappy souls who “died alone, without proper burial rites, (so) the carcass wandered for years, rudderless, rotting and shrinking.” The warning signs of the “sweet hurricane” that provides the novel’s apocalyptic finale are sensed by the “indigent” who make up Popisho’s outcast lower class: “The earth vex … the soil stank of ancient warning.” In between those events, we learn that Popisho’s inhabitants eat butterflies, which have the same effect as alcohol, but “it took practice to pluck them from the sky and eat them alive. To delight a whole nation with his food.” Why 20 years? Does he need to cook meals for people who were fed by the previous macaenus? How specifically does he know what food they need? Readers who ask those kinds of questions may have a hard time with “Popisho” Ross tends to be vague about details of the magical features she vividly establishes.Īnd those details certainly are vivid. A gift, nah?” Xavier, the first character we meet, has a gift for food he can cook meals that nourish an individual’s particular needs and has been chosen as Popisho’s “macaenus.” That job means “he had a scant twenty years to cook a meal for every single adult man and woman on Popisho. “Everyone in Popisho was born with a little something-something, boy, a little something extra. The various manifestations of magic take a while to emerge, but Ross states the basic premise early, in characteristically lilting language. But in “ Popisho,” about a fictional archipelago with echoes to the Caribbean, she emulates the work of Gabriel García Márquez and his Latin American peers by delineating a world in which magic is a matter-of-fact presence in people’s lives.

Though “ All the Blood Is Red” and “ Orange Laughter” were by no means straightforwardly realistic fiction, Ross grounded them in specific real-world landscapes. Leone Ross’ third novel is so overstuffed with characters and plot that readers will either close it in frustration or embrace it for the author’s verbal gusto and brilliant, kaleidoscopic scene-setting. Leone Ross, author of 'Popisho' Photo: Hayley Benoit

Popisho by Leone Ross