When the world tips over by Jandy Nelson

Magical realism at its best, with plenty of magical thinking, intergenerational family curses, and miraculously close calls with death, in this YA novel by Jandy Nelson.

In the wine-growing towns of northern California, the youngest generation of the Fall family of vignerons, bakers and world-wide wanderers, Dizzy, Miles and Wynton are all, in their own ways, grieving their absent father. When they are each plucked from a potentially fatal situation, they become enchanted with their ‘angel’, a charismatic young girl, Cassidy, who fortuitously appears with multi-coloured hair and smelling of flowers, at exactly the right time to save them and then help them unravel their convoluted family tree.

Getting to know them, she begins telling them stories, ‘back in the time of forever,’ and the three are spell-bound, drawn into her enigmatic orbit. Cassidy’s stories parallel the Fall’s family histories and soon the real and the imagined are so intertwined that it is hard to tell them apart. After a while our sense of disbelief is so well suspended, that it is easy to accept boys who need stones on their pockets to stop themselves floating away, girls who sprout wings, or dogs who speak telepathically to their humans.

For more than five generations, negligent fathers and bitter rivalries between brothers have cursed the families, and lovers have had to make heart-breaking choices. Miles, Wynton and Dizzy are not immune to these jinxes, while Cassidy has her own share of heartache with a wild hippy mother struggling with addictions and depression.  As more of the backstory is revealed, we slowly discover who Cassidy is and why she knows the Fall family stories so well.

This is a modern fairy-tale, beautifully written with alternating chapters written by, to, or about the main characters. Notebook entries, newspaper clippings, emails and phone call transcripts interleave the main chapters and add depth to the stories.

Tangled relationships involve drug use, mental illness and depression, parental abandonment and emotional and physical abuse. From the pov of various players, Nelson explores intergenerational trauma and pain, and how love can (sometimes) overcome this.

An engrossing read, made challenging by the sheer number of characters across many generations, and the constant shifting between the real and the magical. Thank goodness for the illustrated family tree at the end! Teacher's notes and recipes are available.

Themes: Family, LGBTQI+, Abandonment, Relationships.

Margaret Crohn