The Magician's Assistant
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3.8 • 174 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Dutch House, a secretive magician’s death becomes the catalyst for his partner’s journey of self-discovery in this “enchanting” book (San Francisco Chronicle) “that is something of a magic trick in itself.” (Newsweek)
When Parsifal, a handsome and charming magician, dies suddenly, his widow Sabine—who was also his faithful assistant for twenty years—learns that the family he claimed to have lost in a tragic accident is very much alive and well. Sabine is left to unravel his secrets, and the journey she takes, from sunny Los Angeles to the bitter windswept plains of Nebraska, will work its own magic on her.
Sabine's extraordinary tale, “with its big dreams, vast spaces, and disparate realities lying side by side” captures the hearts of its readers and “proves to be the perfect place for miraculous transformations.” (The New Yorker)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As she proved in her two previous, critically praised novels, The Patron Saint of Liars and Taft, Patchett has the ability to leaven the gravity of sad situations with gentle irony and ultimate hope. Again in this novel, ordinary people drift into offbeat situations; kindness comes from unexpected sources; and the capacity to change, and to endure, can be awakened in a dormant heart. Sabine had been assistant to L.A. magician Parsifal for 22 years when they finally married. She knew he was homosexual; both had mourned the death of his gentle Vietnamese lover, Phan. What she didn't know until Parsifal's sudden death only a short time later was that Parsifal's real name was Guy Fetters, that had he lied when he claimed to have no living relatives and that he has a mother and two sisters in Alliance, Neb. When these four women meet each other, their combined love for Parsifal helps Sabine to accept the shocking events in Parsifal's life that motivated him to wipe out his past. In finding herself part of his family, she discovers her own desires, responsibilities and potential, and maybe her true sexual nature. The muted tone of this narrative matches Sabine's tentative moves in the void of her loss; yet Patchett's sweet and plangent voice often reminds one of Laurie Colwin in its evocation of love that transcends sexual boundaries and in the portrayal of reassuring patterns of domesticity. And Patchett's ability to evoke sense of place--from the quintessential L.A., basking in heat and eccentric characters to the bare Nebraska landscape populated by bland, wholesome Midwesterners (who, of course, are not what they seem) and buffeted by blizzards and temperatures so low that Sabine feels the hook of her bra "freezing into her skin, the finest knifepoint against her spine"--is near magical in itself. If the narrative moves at a deliberately slow pace, it's rich with the rewarding contrast between the precise mechanics of magic tricks and the real possibility of magic in daily life. $50,000 ad/promo; author tour; U.K. and translation rights: ICM
Customer Reviews
Over too soon
I feel there’s way more to this tale than was told. So many unanswered questions and loose ends. I hope there’s a sequel.
A total surprise
What a wonderful story of discovery this is. Sabine, the assistant, learns the true history of her husband, the magician’s, family. That truth is the basis of the best trick of all, learning who she truly is.
Another great Ann Patchett read
This is an earlier Patchett book, one I’d never heard of until recently. Such a beautiful read. The characters embody the far ends of character spectrum — extremely quirky on one end and morbidly mid-America-boring on the other. But people are never what they seem. Quirky may have started as someone entirely different, while mid-America-boring may have quite a lot going on beneath the surface. Ann Patchett is a genius at reading people, then creating characters with real, imperfect lives. She is also the master of detail. Particularly emotional detail. The smallest touch, glance, breath, movement expresses the character’s thoughts and emotions without using a word. In Ann Patchett’s literary works, words are almost redundant, limiting. It is the closing of an eye, the twitch of a finger, the holding of a breath that elegantly tells the story.