Book Review: More Strange Than True by C.J. Spataro

More Strange Than True by C.J Spataro

Review by Jennifer Rivera

C.J. Spataro’s More Strange Than True is a genre-blending novel of romance and fantasy set in modern-day Philadelphia. Spataro magically weaves together the story of a woman who makes a wish for true love in a moment of grief and transition.  Through this wish, she unknowingly invokes the help of the fairies from Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  From that moment, Shakespeare’s famous words rang true, “Ay me! For aught that ever I could read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.”

The novel opens on the day of Jewell’s father’s memorial at a Center City restaurant called Puck’s Place.  While celebrating her father’s life with her childhood best friend Melody, and her restaurant owner boyfriend Bobby Fellowes, Jewell receives a text from her boyfriend Simon, in which he breaks up with her. While pondering her terrible taste in men, Jewell declares that men are worse than dogs, especially her dog, Oberon. Bobby sends her home with his newest dish, a magical mushroom pasta that has just been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

After a quick trip to the dog park, she meets a lovely man named Steve. After being kindly rejected by Steve, Jewell and Oberon return to their apartment.  She digs into the deliciously magical pasta, sharing bites with the dog as they settle into their nightly routine. Jewell tells Oberon that he would make the perfect man for her. She reasons they share the same likes and dislikes and live together. Later in the evening, after thoroughly enjoying her meal, Jewell unknowingly calls out the faerie queen Titania three times, wishing for a man who will love her just as her dog does before drifting off to sleep.

In the faerie realm, Queen Titania searches for the sounds of the bells and crosses the veil from the faerie realm to Jewell’s apartment with her sisters, Ondine and Lolanthe. Although her sisters are more sympathetic to humankind, Titania reviles them, especially that fool Shakespeare, to whom she regrets showing herself.  But since she has come all this way, she decides to answer this human’s wish and turn her dog into a man. In a highly comical passage, the three fairies realize that the dog has been neutered and restore him to his original state before turning him into a man.

Once the dog has been transformed into a man, Titania demands to know his name. Oberon, he tells her, and the faerie queen is shocked, as this is the name of her long-lost husband.  Sensing the veil between their worlds is thinning, her sisters urge the queen to return home, but she is hesitant, feeling that fate brought her to the human world to meet her love again.

Jewell wakes up to the shock of her life: a strange nude man in her bed and her dog nowhere to be found. Oberon explains to Jewell that three women came and turned him from dog to man to fulfill her wish for true love. He proves it by recounting their trip to the dog park and meeting Steve. Although they are both still in disbelief, Jewell helps Oberon learn how to live as a human. Oberon contends with the loss of a simpler life as a dog.  As time progresses, Jewell and Oberon fall in love. Oberon begins working for Bobby, and their life together progresses.

Unbeknownst to the lovers, Titania has been watching them from her palace since Oberon’s transformation.  She returns to the mortal realm and confronts Bobby, uncovering his real identity as Robin Fellowes/Puck. Weaving the most crucial plot points from Shakespeare’s work, Titania seeks out other fae living among humans and attempts to put a spell on Oberon, so he falls in love with her.  She believes her spell to have brought forth the prophecy of the Elf King’s return. Similarly to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the spells do not go as planned, and the humans become aware of fairies among them.

More Strange Than True masterfully intertwines Shakespeare’s magical world with the real world of a Philadelphia-based environment.  The novel explores similar themes of the intricacies of relationships, mental and physical transformation, and the havoc that magic can create no matter who you are.  Jewell and Oberon are forced to make heartbreaking choices, and it is in these choices that these characters discover who they truly are, and that love is rarely unconditional.


C.J. Spataro’s short fiction has been awarded a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for fiction and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her long short story, “The Twi-Lite” won the Iron Horse Literary Review Fiction Trifecta and was published as an e-single.She has been a finalist in many contests including the Larry Brown Short Story Award from Pithead Chapel, Sequestrum’s Reprint Award, The Switchgrass Review, Mason’s Road, The Philadelphia City Paper, and december magazine, where she was a finalist for the Curt Johnson Prose Awards for Fiction. In 2018 she was nominated for a “Best of the Net” award. Her work was featured three times in the InterAct Theatre Company’s “Writing Aloud” series (which was Philadelphia’s version of NPR’s “Selected Shorts”).As an editor, she has edited the fiction for three “Best of” Anthologies for Philadelphia Stories and edited the fiction and non-fiction for Forgotten Philadelphia and Extraordinary Gifts: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley.Her work has also been included in the anthologies, Healing Visions (Matter Press 2023), Taboos & Transgressions: Stories of Wrongdoings (Madville Publishing 2021), Extraordinary Gifts (PS Books 2014), Another Breath (PS Books/RC Press 2014), 50 Over 50 (PS Books 2016), and Forgotten Philadelphia, Art and Writing Inspired by Philadelphia Heritage Sites (PS Books 2012). Her stories have been published in a number of literary magazines including, Exacting Clam, Sequestrum, Phantom Drift, Italian Americana, december magazine, Permafrost, The Baltimore Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and others. She’s had poetry published in Ovunque Siamo. She has a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Music from Central Michigan University, a Master of Music from Michigan State University, and an MFA in creative writing from Rosemont College. She has taught English composition, journalism, publishing, and creative writing courses at Rutgers, Rowan, Temple, and West Chester Universities, and at Rosemont College and the Community College of Philadelphia. C.J., or Carla as she is known by most, grew up in Michigan, which will always hold a special place in her heart. She has lived in Philadelphia for over 30 years, most of which with her partner, the artist and one-time standup comedian, Vincent Natale Martinez.

 

Jennifer Rivera (left) is a Latina writer and certified dog trainer. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Monmouth University in May 2024. Her prose and poetry have been featured in The Monmouth Review.