The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint

Let me just say, to start out with, that I love Charles de Lint. If I can get my act together and get some writing done, he's one of the three writers I'd want to be like. I'll try to be somewhat objective with this review, but you should know that going in, so that if I start drawing big puffy purple hearts somewhere in this post, you're prepared.


Plot Summary: The story starts with a one-night stand on Halloween night --which fits none of what I'd heard this book was about. The mystery comes into play when Altagracia "Grace" Quintero literally disappears from John Burns' apartment in the middle of the night.

Grace tells us the story of her life. She grew up in the same neighborhood where she met John. She lived with her mother and brother, but spent all her time rebuilding classic cars with her grandfather, who she calls only "Abuelo." She followed in his footsteps by keeping the Quintero last name, learning how to find the perfect line in a car, and memorializing her life in tattoos.

Grace is still recovering from her Abuelos' death, when she surprises a junkie with a gun at her local convenience store.

She wakes up in her own apartment, with a woman she's never met in her doorway. According to this woman, because Grace died within a few blocks of the Alverson Arms apartment building, she is now "living" in a parallel world with the Arms at its center. They are all able to visit the living world for one day during two days a year -- All Hallows Eve/Halloween and May Eve / Beltane. Most of the residents of the Alverson Arms world don't go back on these days because no one who knew them when they were living recognize them. That sense of disconnection outweighs the benefits of being able to eat and drink and feel the extremes of human emotions again. Grace meets John on her first Halloween back -- only two weeks after she died.

This is a story of Grace and John, of life and death, the things we hold onto and how we let go.


My Reaction: This was a very different Charles de Lint book. Many of his recent books are set in the fictional Canadian city of Newford. They often involve artists and Celtic musicians and a mix of European and Native American folklore figures. This ties kinto his own life where he and his wife live in Ontario, Canada and are musicians and artists.

The Mystery of Grace is set in the American Southwest. In the acknowledgments Charles describes some of his process in immersing himself in the hot rod community -- Grace and her Abuelo's community. He talks about the blogs and magazines he read and the people he talked with to get a flavor and details of the world he would be describing. As with many of his books, he talks about the music he was listening to while he was writing -- in this case new and classic rockabilly and surf guitar music.

This book was consistent with Charles's other books, in that the main characters are working through their own issues -- of course, the issues don't usually involve being dead.

I was expecting this to be mostly a love story (like 70 - 80%) and only partly about death and moving on after facing the death of those we love and our own mortality. I'd say it was 70 - 80% about facing death (and, in contrast, our ideas of life and community) and only 20 - 30% the love story between Grace and John. The mystery revolved around the Alverson Arms world, and not so much about the interplay of traditional folklore characters with the modern world.


Bottom Line: The setting and characters of this story are different from Charles de Lint's other books. This is an excellent and challenging book that deals with some serious issues through the lens of science fiction.

Other Reviews of this Book:

• SciFiGuy