Spoonbenders

Daryl Gregory’s novel Spoonbenders (2017) follows the exploits of the Telemachuses, a family with psychic and telekinetic powers. Despite their dazzling “gifts” and renown on the daytime talk show circuit, the Telemachuses never truly benefit, monetarily or otherwise, from their powers. Gregory was inspired to write the novel by Uri Geller, a self-described psychic who made a name for himself bending spoons, supposedly with the power of his mind alone, on game shows in the 1970s: “It just struck me that it's the saddest of the psychic powers. Does anyone really need bent cutlery? There's something about the small scale of it. They're not changing the world. They're just bending spoons.” Spoonbenders was Gregory's first novel not to fall squarely into either the science fiction or fantasy genre; In a 2017 interview, Gregory noted that Spoonbenders had been optioned for a TV series by a screenwriter from Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy. He is perhaps best known for his award-winning novella We Are All Completely Fine.

Spoonbenders takes place in the 1990s, the narrative shifting between present and past timelines. As the story begins, young Matty Telemachus, fantasizing about his cousin Mary Alice, discovers that he has the ability to leave his body, or to astrally project. This leads to an intense interest in whether his ability has been inherited, and he begins to look into his family's past. His family is no ordinary family: his mother, Irene, is a member of the Amazing Telemachus Family, who once were in show business, but have since fallen on hard times. His family members, however, don't encourage his investigation and refuse to cooperate. Matty persists, discovering some old tapes and watching them to learn more about his family history.

Meanwhile, Matty's father, Teddy, the family patriarch, has become involved in a romance with a dangerous mobster's young wife, compounding the family mafia troubles, as Teddy's brother, Frankie, is already in debt to them. As the novel progresses, flashbacks reveal the family's past. Teddy and Maureen met in the 1960s, in a classified ESP study conducted by the CIA with the codename Project Stargate. It turns out that, although Teddy was nothing more than a conman, Maureen had actual psychic powers that she passed on to her children. Her son, Frankie, had telekinesis, the power to move things with his mind; her daughter Irene, Matty's mom, had the ability to always know when someone was lying (although only when observing them in person); and Buddy was a clairvoyant with “memories of the future.” Despite how stunning the children's powers are, none of them seems to truly benefit from having them: Irene's powers make it impossible for her to either hold down a job or find lasting romance; Buddy seems to have lost his mind, spending most of his time mysteriously digging holes in the backyard. By the time Matty starts snooping, the Amazing Telemachus family is, both figuratively and literally, in a ruin—not despite, but because of their powers, which attracted the attention of many powerful groups.



Things do not get better when the CIA begins to stalk the family again, decades after Teddy and Maureen's original involvement with them. They are keen to learn whether any of the family still possesses powers that they might exploit. Irene has waded into the world of online dating, where she finds that her powers do not work online. Eventually, she meets a man named Josh, whom she flies out to Arizona to see. Fearing that he will ask her to move out there to be with him, she ends things for a time. Frankie, embroiled with the mob, solicits Matty's help to pay off his mob debt. He asks Matty to teach him to astrally travel, hoping to use the power to learn the combination to a mafia safe that he can then plunder and hand back to the mob as payment for his debts. His plan fails, eventually leading to a showdown between the mob and the Telemachus' that culminates in the “Zap,” an event that Buddy has known was coming for some time. He sacrifices his power to save his family. After the confrontation, he must learn how to live in the world without seeing the future—a situation he finds both terrifying and oddly freeing. Matty continues to astrally project, and the question of whether this power will ultimately be to his benefit is left open-ended.

Spoonbenders addresses giftedness with humor, but also a clear-sighted and rather cynical earnestness. When considered apart from the fantastic elements of their lives, the Telemachus family's example warns of the dangers of possessing talents that others covet and the pitfalls of notoriety that engenders jealousy—a uniquely apt observation in an era obsessed with fame.