Magic in a scientific world

Books that successfully straddle two genres are a cause for celebration, but they risk falling through the cracks between niche markets. You can feel the resistance from either side: Romance readers might enjoy "The Time Traveler's Wife," but would they accept a lover who pops in and out of time? (They did - in droves - even before it was picked by the Today Show Book Club.) It seemed impossible to recommend Margaret Atwood's weird and wonderful "Blind Assassin" without apologizing nervously for the science fiction that runs through the story of domestic intrigue. (The Booker Prize in 2000 helped.) And last fall, beneath the lavish praise for Susanna Clark's "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" - a historical novel about the Napoleonic Wars - you could hear a pleading tone: "Yes, it's about magicians, but it's really good."

Englishman Graham Joyce is a popular and critically acclaimed writer of fantasy who's been sneaking over to the realm of literary fiction lately, producing stories that glint with pixie dust when you least expect it. In fact, his latest novel, "The Limits of Enchantment," is about the liminal hues that run between worlds we think of as wholly separate. Readers on both sides of the great genre divide would do well to peer into this one.

The story is told by Fern, the adopted daughter of an old herbal healer in a small English village. Mammy, as everyone calls her, wears a crusty, suspicious personality, but those who come to the moss-grown cabin feel the depth of her wisdom and compassion. She's spent her life helping the people of this village, particularly young women who find themselves carrying burdens they feel they cannot bring to term.

Like so much in this story, her service resides in a vague, never quite articulated zone, "a half secret." The year is 1966, and abortion isn't legal; everyone knows and doesn't know what she's up to. Mammy is willing but reluctant to help these girls, who afterward are relieved but sorrowful.

The strangeness of this in-between world is becoming clearer to Fern. Although she's 21, she still acts like a young dependent, allowing Mammy to guide her in all things. "In many ways Mammy had prevented me from being part of the changing times," she admits. She can't help wondering about life beyond the glow of her mother's wisdom. "The technology I could see advancing all around me and even in the skies overhead barely touched our lives." While helping Mammy collect herbs by moonlight, Fern looks up to spot Soviet satellites carrying dogs and monkeys. Surely, she thinks, that's as magical as Mammy's hedgerow medicine.

She also can't help wondering about sex, the great energy that seems to drive and ruin so many lives in their little village. In some ways, this is a novel all about sex. It even includes one of the funniest seduction scenes I can remember. But typical of Joyce's sleight of hand, there isn't any sex in the book. (I'm not being Clintonesque; you'll just have to read it for yourself.)

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