BLOG: “Watering Heaven” Brings Magical Realism to New Degree

If you were asked “What is the meaning of life?” during a job interview, how would you answer it?  Would you believe your eyes if you saw a monk fly with a numerous amount of acupuncture needles aiding him?  How would you react if an old high school crush explained to you in great detail on how they got abducted by aliens?  Those are just some of the concepts that can be found in Peter Tieryas Liu’s debut book, “Watering Heaven.”

This short story collection, which was recently longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, presents 20 first-person narratives of obscure journeys of life in the modern day world, combined with a touch here and there of magical realism.  From the streets of Beijing, to some of our own country’s grand metropolises such as Los Angeles and New York City, these unnamed or otherwise not fully revealed narrators describe to readers stories that explore the search for one’s identity, purpose and happiness in life.

An example can be in the short story “Staccato” where the narrator stays in Beijing for six weeks with an identity completely different from his own, only to realize that everyone else around him is doing the same thing; in attempt to live as that of another for a while.  Another can be found in “The Buddha of Many Parts” where the narrator encounters a young woman who invites strangers into her home and takes photos of her favorite physical traits, in order to create the perfect human.

If there are two things that are benefiting to this short story collection, one of them would be that the conversations that occur throughout them are of subjects that even the wisest adult craves to have on a daily basis, beyond the setting of an undergrad philosophy classroom.  It’s very unlikely to be asked “What is the meaning of life?” during a job interview and I’m pretty sure you can’t get away with listening in on someone’s conversation in a phone booth without being looked at like a complete creep.  However, Liu takes the liberty of shining a light on these unlikely instances otherwise.  

The other benefiting aspect to “Watering Heaven” is that Liu, in his clever way of articulately written narratives and his vivid descriptions, is able to weave in facades of magical realism into these various situations, so much as to where they are truly believable occurrences.  Normally when a book is dealing with the subject of magic or anything fantasy-oriented, there’s this notion for it to be set in a world or dimension apart from our own.  It seems that any infiltration of the subject to the real world would be seen as an insult to society or just generally unbelievable otherwise.  Liu defies that notion through the means of a woman who lays an egg after every time she has sex and a woman who can’t see her own reflection.

As someone who’s accustomed to identity, it actually would have been nice to have more background information to these characters.  Everything else, from the environments to the situations, are vividly described and despite these tales appearing in the forms of short stories, why not have more perspective on who these characters are?  

“Watering Heaven” is definitely not for the light-hearted, as a lot of these stories have a melancholy mood set to them and not all of them are guaranteed to end happily.  However, sticking to its realistic portrayal to the modern world and the problems its people faces, I can understand why, for sometimes life can be sad at times too.

This is not a New York Times bestseller nor is as well known as that of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy, but I truly believe that “Watering Heaven” is one of the more enlightening books to come out of 2012.  For Liu’s debut, it definitely came out with a bang in the matters of its bizarre, abstract, possibly maddening and overall inspiring content.

Warning: Due to sexual content, implied nudity and other graphic descriptions, the author of this blog advises not to have “Watering Heaven” within reach of kids under the age of 16.