Fling!
Lily Iona MacKenzie, 2015
Pen-L Publishing
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781942428299
Summary
When ninety-year-old Bubbles receives a letter from Mexico City asking her to pick up her mother’s ashes, lost there seventy years earlier and only now surfacing, she hatches a plan.
A woman with a mission, Bubbles convinces her hippie daughter Feather to accompany her on the quest. Both women have recently shed husbands and have a secondary agenda: they’d like a little action. And they get it.
Alternating narratives weave together Feather and Bubbles’ odyssey with their colorful Scottish ancestors, creating a family tapestry. The two women travel south from Canada to Mexico where Bubbles’ long-dead mother, grandmother, and grandfather turn up, enlivening the narrative with their hilarious antics.
In Mexico, where reality and magic co-exist, Feather gets a new sense of her mother, and Bubbles’ quest for her mother’s ashes—and a new man—increases her zest for life. Unlike most women her age, fun-loving Bubbles takes risks, believing she’s immortal. She doesn’t hold back in any way, eating heartily and lusting after strangers, exulting in her youthful spirit.
Readers will believe they’ve found the fountain of youth themselves in this character. At ninety, Bubbles comes into her own, coming to age, proving it’s never too late to fulfill one’s dreams.
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• Education—M.As. (two), San Francisco State University
• Currently—lives in San Francisco Bay Area, California
Lily Iona MacKenzie sprouted on the Canadian prairies under cumulous clouds that bloomed everywhere in Alberta’s big sky. They were her first creative writing instructors, scudding across the heavenly blue, constantly changing shape: one minute an elephant, bruised and brooding. The next morphing into a rabbit or a castle. These billowing masses gave her a unique view of life on earth.
As a girl, she prowled the land, talking to chickens and pigs and lambs, creating scenarios for them. She also tried to make perfume from the wild Alberta roses and captured caterpillars, watching with wonder when they transformed themselves into butterflies. Everything around her seemed infused by nature spirits waiting to be released.
She realized that all objects are in motion, waiting for stories to illuminate them. The clouds’ shifting form also schooled her in the various possibilities open to her as a writer. So did Jack Frost’s enchanted creations that enlivened the windows in wintertime, forcing her to view her surroundings as if through a bewitching prism. These early experiences helped her to envision multi-dimensional characters. Magical realism pulses at the heart of her narratives, her work celebrating the imagination.
As an adult, Lily continues to seek instruction about fiction from clouds. Just as they provide the earth with much-needed water, she believes that stories have a similar function, preparing the mind to receive new ideas. Also, conditions inside a cloud are not static—water droplets are constantly forming and re-evaporating. Stories, too, change, depending on who is reading them, each one giving life to its readers.
A high school dropout and a mother at 17, in her early years, Lily supported herself as a stock girl in the Hudson’s Bay Company, as a long distance operator for the former Alberta Government Telephones, and as a secretary (Bechtel Corp sponsored her into the States).
She also was a cocktail waitress at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, briefly broke into the male-dominated world of the docks as a longshoreman (and almost got her legs broken), founded and managed a homeless shelter in Marin County, co-created “The Story Shoppe," a weekly radio program for children that aired on KTIM in Marin County, and eventually earned two Master’s degrees (one in English with an emphasis on Creative writing and one in the Humanities).
She has published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 150 American and Canadian venues. Fling!, one of her novels, was published in 2015. Her poetry collection All This was published in 2011. Another novel, Bone Songs, will be published in November 2016.
She taught writing at the University of San Francisco for over 30 years, was vice-president of USF's part-time faculty union, and currently is available as a writing coach, tutor, and editor. When she isn’t writing, she paints and travels widely with her husband.
Lily is available to visit reading groups in person (if the group is in the San Francisco Bay Area), via Skype, or by speaker phone. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Lily Iona on Facebook...and watch her on Youtube.
Book Reviews
Fling! is both hilarious and touching, the madcap journey of an aging mother and her adult daughter from cold Protestant Canada into the hallucinogenic heart of Mexico's magic, where the past literally comes to life. Every page is a surprise… A scintillating read.
Lewis Buzbee, author and professor of creative writing - University of San Francisco
I was sold before I even turned the first page. No more than twenty pages in, I struggled to put it down, drawn in by the brief interlacing point of view chapters that leap chronologically and geographically between Scotland, Canada, and Mexico. To say that I was pleasantly surprised by Mackenzie’s charmingly offbeat novel would be an inexcusable understatement. Captivated by the surreal plot, eccentric yet relatable characters, and simple but vivid language, I quickly confirmed my suspicion that Fling! was about far than just a fling (which, in the age of Tinder, has taken on something of an unsavory connotation). With all the lighthearted fun of a fling, this novel also explores the importance of restoring fractured familial relationships, coming to terms with mortality and transience, and maintaining a certain joie de vivre no matter what your age or circumstances.
Karen Lively - California Journal of Women Writers
A 90-year-old woman goes on a trip to Mexico City with her hippie daughter—and runs into several very dead, very funny relatives on the way—in the freewheeling new novel from the Bay Area author, who teaches writing at the University of San Francisco. (One of eight summer reads along with Judy Blume, Bruce Bochy, and other well-known authors.)
San Francisco Weekly
This book is a giddy, breathless, dizzy journey through space and time—pinballing from Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early twentieth century, Canada in the 1950’s and Mexico in 1996. The point of view bounces around quite a bit, and at times I was rather seasick from the view inside Bubbles’ head. That said, Bubbles’ swings in thought, focus, mood and personality were authentic, reminding me of listening to my own grandmother during the middle stages of dementia. It is obvious that the author is familiar with the idiosyncrasies of a free-spirited woman entering her nineties; unwilling to go gently into anyone’s version of “that dark night.” This is a poetic, unconventional, farcical journey through the enigmatic terrain of family relationships, shifting perceptions and lost loves.
Trisha Slay - TrishaSlay.com
Magical realism dominates much of the last third of the book. At times, it feels as if Feather and Bubbles have followed "Alice" down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Except, in this story, Wonderland is rural and impoverished Mexico and it exists on a parallel plane where death is merely another state of living. If you aren't able to take an adventurous vacation this year, Fling! is the next best alternative. You won't soon forget Bubbles whose effervescent name matches her buoyant ability to never act nor succumb to her advanced age.
Audry Fryer - AllThingsAudry.blogspot.com
Fling! is a delightful piece of magical realism that will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who loves this often overlooked subgenre. The main characters are funny, quirky and developed in an engaging way as the novel progresses. I was never bored at any moment while reading this amazing piece by MacKenzie.
indtale.com
As the chapters flick backwards and forwards in time following Bubbles back to her childhood in Skye and Feather to her adolescence, we come to see the roots not only of the two women's behaviour but also that in some ways the women are not so dissimilar and are following a family pattern. When in the latter part of the novel Bubbles's mother and grandmother turn up, this family dynamic is expanded and further explored. Many readers will identify with Feather's feelings of frustration, resentment and love towards her mother. And many will enjoy the comedy and zaniness of Bubbles and her adventures. There are times when the reader might feel that she too has been smoking some of Feather's weed. But the novel is more than just a light-hearted read. Of course there is the daughter/mother relationship to consider. But it is also interesting to note the parallels drawn between the Gaelic beliefs of the family's Scottish roots and those they encounter in Mexico. And what is more there are some delightful references to the magic realist tradition for those if us who care about such things.
Zoe Brooks - magic-realism-books.blogspot.com
Bubbles, a sprightly ninety when the novel opens, decides she and Feather must follow in Heather’s footsteps—not vanish into Mexico but simply retrieve Heather’s long lost ashes and perhaps discover what tempted her mother to leave family behind forever. Of course, Feather and Bubbles discover much more: sex, drugs, shamans, a very vital statue, and living, dancing long-dead relatives—including Heather, still wild and spry and generous with motherly advice. With a light but practiced hand, MacKenzie weaves the rich traditions of Skye with the myths and magic of Mexico (and a rather modest portrayal of her hometown Calgary) to explore motherhood, the ties that bind generations of women—and perhaps the secret to happiness itself.
understoreymagazine.ca
Ms. Mackenzie does a wonderful creating the irrepressible Bubbles! The ninety-year-old matriarch not only says what she thinks, but also acts on it, whether it is eating with gusto, dancing, or seducing men young enough to be her grandson! Her colorful remembrances and internal dialogues should delight readers. Feather, her daughter, is a harder character to embrace. She considers herself a self-styled hippie, but often her behavior tends to be more rigid and conservative with her concerns about money, her mother’s mental stability, and control. The author highlights the contrast between who Feather thinks she is and who she really is. The reader tags along as the duo make their way south enjoying the sun, liquid-eyed hunks, and life. Fling! is a self-discovery road trip, and an enjoyable read reminding the reader to chase rainbows while on the right side of the soil.
forums.onlinebookclub.org
Discussion Questions
1. How is magic (or supernatural elements) introduced in the novel?
2. What is its role in the narrative?
3. What kind of reading agreement has to be established between the author and the reader in order for the magical elements to work?
4. Do the magical realist devices disrupt the logic of the story or enhance it?
5. What specific things give this novel a magical quality?
6. Which character or characters do you identify with the most?
7. How does each character (Bubbles and Feather) reveal herself over the course of the novel. At what point do your sympathies begin to change (if they do)?
8. What role does death have in this book?
9. Does Fling! remind you of any other works you’ve read?
10. How did this novel cause you to think differently about mother/daughter relationships or family dynamics?
11. How does the use of time in Fling! contribute to its magical qualities?
12. What do you think are the novel’s main themes?
13. What role does “the goddess” play in Fling!?
14. In what ways does Bubbles seem mythic or ageless? (not mythic in the sense of implausible)
15. How do the characters in Fling! subvert the stereotypes of older adults?
16. What role does the setting have in Fling!?
17. How would you describe the difference between Heather, Annie, Bubbles, and Feather?
18. What role do the men play in this novel?
19. How does Feather get educated about her mother (Bubbles)?
20. Would you classify Fling! as a coming-of-age novel? Why or why not?
21. Did anything surprise you in Fling!? Did you learn something new about being human?
(Questions provided courtesy of the author.)