All the Crooked Saints is a lovely homage to magical realist fiction. Set in rural Colorado in the 1950s, this short novel follows a family of "saints" who grant a very interesting variety of miracle. Like all magicians, their powers have limitations, leading to complications when outsiders intrude on their closed world.

In my less kind moments, I sometimes think that Maggie Stiefvater is too good for young adult fiction. (I know, I know, there are plenty of YA authors who excel at style, but I haven't stumbled on nearly enough of them.) The prose in this book is gorgeous; it never overstays its welcome or, in my view, exoticizes its source material. Every page was truly a pleasure.

The story leans on the author's talents for evoking rural American life and blending the supernatural and mundane. This book is cozy as heck; the setting was probably my favorite character. It's also a wryly funny book - there are many hijinks, and at least one of them involves a rooster.

Now I should probably atone for my sins and go read some actual magical realist authors, as my knowledge of the genre pretty much begins and ends with Garcia Marquez. Somehow I have never read Like Water For Chocolate...

Once again Maggie Stiefvater has entranced me with her words.
Have you discovered her yet? If not let this be your first Stiefvater book.
There is just something about the way she writes that screams "I love doing this", I just get a sense Maggie really enjoys the craft. Also, she writes magic into every sentence. ( )

Sometimes when I take my dog out at night, there's just something about the moon or the weather or the light that makes me tell the dog "Hurry up, this is ghost weather."

This book has ghost weather. "Well that's no surprise, Twitchy, all the miracles and blackness..." No, I mean beyond that.

Magical realism is a weird and tricky genre for me. I hated Love in the Time of Cholera for other reasons, but its sense of magical realism never struck me as anything past awkward coincidences. I love love love Raven Boys but I would call it fantasy. I think the otherworldly feeling this has even when it isn't being about saints/miracles/blackness is what I'm meant to get from magical realism, that sense of the book's world being both my world and also very much not.

I don't know that I'd call this YA, though, just because I'm used to YA characters having teenager YA problems, and these are hardly that.

Maggie Stiefvater's writing style seems to be like mushrooms, or candy corn, or pineapple on pizza: Strong opinions for or against, not a lot of in-betweens. I'm a fan! (also of mushrooms and pineapple, but not candy corn.) If you're familiar with it and want to know if it's in this too, yes, yes it is. If you're not familiar with it, try it out!

Also! If you liked this, but want even darker, maybe try out Zoo City by Lauren Beukes? Like a town of pilgrims described from the POV of the pilgrims. Hanging-on darkness, the magical realism spooky feeling. I kept thinking of it while I was reading this. ( )

2017 Winter:

Maggie has done it again. Only she could start out with a statement about how miracles and radio waves are the same, lending to me making a confused, focusing face, and lead me through an intricate, native story to a truth so deeply in line with those words that they will, in fact, never leave me again.

I loved this book. I loved the miracles. I loved the family. I loved the cursed. I love the path it took to discovering where the true fault in all of this lay. I love how the past and present come together, through sacrifice and love, to build what will be a better future for this family of people charge with helping to heal those in the world who need it. ( )

I want to hug this book. It’s so original, and full of the heart, humor, and imagination I’ve come to expect from Stiefvater. I loved the strangeness of Bicho Raro and its saints and pilgrims.
Beautiful book by one of my faves. Great on audio—I recommend bumping the speed a notch if you’re able. Thom Rivera did nice job as reader. ( )