Winter Fantasy

The seasons exert power over most of our lives whether we acknowledge it or not. Most of us have a seasonal preference: we love a rainy spring, the blistering heat of summer, crispy fall air, or the chill of winter. In Texas, more often than not, I notice and find myself annoyed by a lack of four seasons. Spring, fall and winter run together to form one season—the short, bearable one—while summer is decidedly longer and unbearable. Occasionally, between November and February, we experience some noticeable cold snaps, and I relish them. It is not often I get to don my favorite leather jacket or really need a scarf. These small pleasures should not be taken lightly and they consistently affect my mood and subsequently bleed over into my reading choices. My desire for the comforts of winter—curling up in front of a fire or hunkering down with a mug of hot chocolate—influence my desire for comfort reading.

I began to notice it in the cold months of 2001. As soon as the weather kept me inside and the days grew shorter I began to crave a specific type of book—fantasy. I tend to equate fantasy reading with comfort based on my long-time love of fairy tales, children’s books, and stories full of magic. As a kid, they are the types of books that most often allowed me to block the world out and focus solely on the joy of reading. As an adult I find that they still transport me away, and after a long absence from fantasy reading the first seasonal book craving I recall as a grownup was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I resisted reading the Harry Potter series for quite a long time in comparison to many others, but when I finally did give in, I found myself engulfed. Reading that first book, curled up in a cozy chair on a cold Texas day was just heavenly. While Harry and his friends explored Diagon Alley and fussed over sweets, new robes, and a snowy white owl, I felt a little warmer. The book seemed to wrap me up in a blanket of comfort and shield me from the changes outside. I spent that particular Christmas break from college whizzing through J.K. Rowling’s fictional world, more enchanted and heated through by each and every page.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is another wintertime fantasy that took over my life. It took several months, November to January, to work my way through the massive tome, but to this very day I cannot imagine a better winter reading experience. I accompanied Frodo and Sam on their journey to the blistering caverns of Mount Doom, followed Legolas as he glided effortlessly across the surface of snowy cliffs, and fought with Aragorn for the freedom of Middle Earth.

I typically read fantasy novels sporadically throughout the year, dipping in and out of them without much rhyme or reason, but it is only in winter that they consume me so thoroughly. Just as I begin to crave Thanksgiving turkey and dressing and Christmas treats like Martha Washington candies and my mom’s special “trash” trail mix, the urge to drift away into a magical world takes over.

I gave a sneak peak into this winter’s fantasy reading in my previous column, “More Time in the Graveyard,” my review of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, but that review is only one piece of the larger puzzle. Right now I’m neck deep in another fantastical read, Sarah Addison Allen’s The Sugar Queen. I read Allen’s first novel, Garden Spells, earlier in the year and was fascinated by the characters who were normal, everyday women who just happen to have magical abilities. I always struggle with exactly how to label Allen’s work. It seems to hover somewhere near magical realism without touching those other authors I associate with the label like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Sugar Queen is an intoxicating mix of southern charm and small doses of the supernatural. Josey Cirrini is 27 years old, lives at home with her ailing mother, and secretly nibbles on the store of sweets that she keeps behind a wall panel in her closet. When she wakes up one frosty winter morning to discover a fellow townswoman, Della Lee, hiding in her closet, her whole life seems to capsize. Della is on the run from a very unpleasant man, and as she talks to Josey day in and day out, she seems, somehow, to help shape Josey’s experiences; her love life specifically. Soon Josey meets Chloe Finley, another woman down on her love, for whom books appear just at the moment she needs them most whether they happen to land outside her bathroom door, on her couch, or on the griddle at her restaurant. Josey herself has a seemingly underwhelming ability at her disposal, a very clever red sweater that her mother hates but that seems to bring good luck.

Allen’s writing, much like the covers of her books, is colorful, fanciful, and populated with solitary women who seem lost in their own internal landscapes. While some might brush it off or label it fluff, it makes for a satisfying cold weather fantasy. Allen has a talent for providing tangible details that allow the reader to taste the food, smell the air, and get a mind’s eyeful of Josey, Della, and Chloe’s love interests.

The secret closet was the closet in the adjoining room. That bedroom had a huge armoire in it, a ridiculously heavy old Cirrini heirloom. It took up most of one wall and hid that closet. She’d found the door between the two closets by accident, when she would sit in her closet and eat candy she hid in her pockets when she was young. Back then she used to hide from her mother in the secret space just to worry her, but now she stocked it with magazines, paperback romances and sweets. Lots and lots of sweets. Moonpies and pecan rolls, Chick-O-Sticks and Cow Tales, Caramel Creams and Squirrel Nut Zippers, Red Hots and Bit-O-Honey, boxes upon boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes. The space had a comforting smell to it, like Halloween, like sugar and chocolate and crisp plastic wrappers.

Josey Cirrini is a woman with little sweetness in her life aside from her secret stash of candy and escapist reading, but the friends she makes in The Sugar Queen help bring a great deal more interest and intrigue to her life. The touches of magic and the wisps of romance in the novel—in addition to a decadently wintry setting like western North Carolina filled with ski slopes, snow drifts, and ladies’ tea rooms--make this one a perfect winter fantasy.

Since it is only just now the beginning of December, I feel sure there are a number of other fantastic reads in store for me this season. When I browse through my stacks the covers that transport me elsewhere get first dibs; covers, like those of Sarah Addison Allen’s novels, that look like candy ready to be savored. Stories that I suspect will delight me as I was delighted by winter as a child are at the center of my radar. If they appear warm and toasty, sweet or savory . . . magical in the least and charged with warmth and comfort, they are fair game this season.

Books Mentioned in This Column
The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen (Bantam)

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (Bantam)

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, One Volume (Houghton Mifflin)

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic)


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.