Magic Can’t Save Us by Josh Denslow

Magic Can’t Save Us by Josh Denslow: A Humorous Take on Failed Relationships

Many relationships are doomed from the start. But what if there was a way to save them? The characters in Magic Can’t Save Us think they may have the answers—whyvisit a human counselor when you could spend the night ina house haunted by a poltergeist that specializes in couplestherapy?

Others are ready to call it quits, like the pair that’s torn apart, literally, by a bevvy of belligerent harpies. Meanwhile, a scorned woman hires a dragon to guard her house from her cheating mate, a couple tries to combat the inertia of their marriage through the revitalizing charms of unicorn meat, and a centaur seduces a luckless man’s girlfriend over a series of conference calls. In these eighteen tales of likely failure, when a magical creature shows up, you know things are only going to get worse from there.

Subverting the all-too-real emotions of romantic relationships with humour and iconoclastic takes on classic fantastical beings, Magic Can’t Save Us makes us rethink the choices we have made in order to ask a harrowing human question: Just what does it take to redeem a relationship?

Josh Denslow

Josh Denslow is the author of Not Everyone Is Special (7.13 Books), Super Normal (StillhousePress), and the upcoming collection Magic Can’tSave Us (UNO Press). His most recent short stories have appeared in Electric Literature’s TheCommuter, The Rumpus, and Okay Donkey, among others. He is the Email Marketing Manager forBookshop.org, and he has read and edited for SmokeLong Quarterly for over a decade. He currently lives in Barcelona.

Magic Can’t Save Us is is available for pre-order on Bookshop.

Other Books by Josh Denslow

Not Everyone Is Special by Josh Denslow

A teen who can teleport just wants to make his mom happy. A midget working as an elf in a year-round Christmas-themed amusement park battles his archrival: a condescending Santa. You’ve heard of Fight Club, but have you been to the Underground Punch Market? Like the work of George Saunders crossed with Richard Linklater, NOT EVERYONE IS SPECIAL is a collection of slacker fabulist stories that are at once speculative, hilarious, and poignant.

Super Normal by Josh Denslow

As they grapple with unemployment, their mother’s terminal illness, and their father’s death, Beth, Taylor, and Denise find themselves back in their childhood home after years of being apart. When a precocious fourth-grader discovers Denise’s superpower and then goes missing, it’s up to these three floundering siblings to bring him home. Their unique abilities have never, ever helped them before-can they make a difference now? 

Praise for Josh Denslow

“Whether they are linked by blood or circumstance, each of the absorbing, effortlessly charming characters in Super Normal share the same exuberant, inexhaustible desire for connection. Denslow’s prose is empathetic and endlessly witty-this novel deftly explores grief, longing, and the actual magic of one unforgettable family.”

-Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light

“Josh Denslow has done something remarkable here. Super Normal is a beautiful novel about what it takes to love and accept ourselves and each

other, written with real care and big-heartedness and attention to what makes us human.”

– Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder

“Josh Denslow does something brilliant in Super Normal, using the magic of superheroes not to render the world in some new and fantastical way, but to allow us to see how mysterious and beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking the bonds of family are, what we inherit, who we hold onto, how we keep running away from and back to the people who made us. With such a sharp wit and a sense of when to allow that humor to transform to address the heaviness of the story, Denslow has constructed a wonderful novel that you can’t put down.”

-Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

“Denslow has not only masterfully layered multiple narratives to gradually converge into this epic super-moment, he’s also captured the snappy dialogue and sharp humor that make comics and graphic novels so delightful to read. Denslow has accomplished a dynamic, heart-warming book about grief and family that will rekindle your faith in humanity. This is a super-memorable, super-entertaining, super-novel that is, despite its title, anything but super-normal.”

– Kalani Pickhart, author of I Will Die in a Foreign Land

“Josh Denslow has written a novel that is one third superhero story, one third contemporary bildungsroman, and one third prickly rose bush. The characters alternate between scratching and drawing blood and budding and blossoming in each other’s presence in a way that will be hard for readers to put down.”

– Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly