Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Bewilderingly Accepting
Imagine, if you will, that you go back to your hometown to try to find the father that abandoned you as a baby. When you get there, the people you talk to disappear before your very eyes, and you start to realize that everyone is probably actually dead. What would you do?
Well, we'd run screaming for the next mule cart out of town (if we could find one). Juan Preciado, the narrator, however, just sort of takes it in stride.
Don't get us wrong—he is literally scared to death by the ghosts, but at first he just tries to matter-of-factly figure out who is alive and who is dead, as though it were a normal question to say "Are you alive?" (34.21) to the woman you're walking down the street with.
This tone is an important element of the Magical Realism genre. While it reads like a regular old realistic novel, it's got some really crazy elements. This mix shocks the reader into thinking about what the realistic parts of the novel have to do with the novel's historical context, and what the magical parts might be saying about it.
For example, a reader might think that since the novel takes place in a real town in Mexico in the 20th century and mentions the Revolution, that the one of the book's points might be that the town has no future because of one man's selfishness… and that that might be a comment on Mexico's political system during that time period. And that reader might just be totally spot-on.