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I am temperamentally ill-suited to review this collection of essays, being largely indifferent to the personal or narrative essay. It is with surprise then that I found myself deeply immersed in Urquhart’s project. The majority of the essays combine the author’s folklore training (PhD. Memorial University) with her autobiographical inquiries into childhood, pregnancy, motherhood, the loss of her brother, and the pandemic, to name just some topics explored in the ten essays. Literature from folklore and companion disciplines is used lightly but rigorously in two modes: first, to inform and more richly explore issues like a childhood haunting experience, to tease out what we mean and can know about how children experience and know the world; second, by interrogating, counter-reading, and retelling traditional tales – often in parallel structure to the autobiographical essay element – to create a richly nuanced investigation of both a part of the author’s life and experience but also the larger phenomenon of, for example, women’s storytelling in a world of unequal power relations (“Lessons for Female Success”), or the complex ethics and epistemologies of genetics, testing, knowing and pregnancy in “Child Unwittingly Promised.”
Urquhart’s style is akin to the best short story writers: precise, economical and unpredictable. Her skill is in moving from temporally linear organization, to thematic, and in tone from the impressionistic, to analytic. The range is surprising and the skill to pull it off impressive. Not every essay is equally immersive, “Nuclear Folklore” is largely reportage, and “The Plague Legends” is a simple pairing of tale types and motifs from traditional plague narratives with her family experience of the current pandemic that adds little to either topic.
What is a folklorist to take away from the collection since it is not written for scholars (although there is a nice bibliography containing many scholars that will be familiar to us). There are three places where the book might find a home. First is anyone who enjoys the craft of the personal essay. Second, in any courses that focus on writing folklore. Not only are the pieces beautifully crafted but folklore students could take inspiration from an essay like the titular “Ordinary Wonder Tales” to see how careful fieldwork can be used to weave thick description, personal reflection and keen analysis into a moving piece of writing. This essay may find a place in my fieldwork course. A third place the work might find a home would be as an exemplar, a demonstration of how folklore – especially traditional talescinform our everyday life and provide a resource for understanding it. As Urquhart says, “For every malady of the human psyche there is a folktale…” [np].