The Magician's Assistant

Rating:
Summary: Do You Believe In Magic?
Review: "The Magician's Assistant" by Anne Patchett is a wonderful character study which is ultimately a coming of age story of a middle-aged woman who must now find a life without the person who had truly defined it. The novel opens as Sabine, the title character, unexpectedly faces the death of the love of her life and husband-in-name-only, Parsifal the Magician. As time goes by, Sabine (and the reader) slowly uncover Parsifal's hidden past. Not unlike a magician herself, Patchett skillfully weaves the journey of a handful of characters as they create a new reality of the Parsifal they thought they knew.

As the cover says, this novel is very much about the feelings of love and loss of both parties. The strangers pull together (reluctantly and awkwardly at first) and soon find comfort in sharing their stories and own lives. Sabine is able to piece together a fuller picture of the man she spent much of her life with, while Parsifal's family learn about the son and brother they spent much of their life without. Patchett makes you care about each character (even the deceased magician). Much to her credit, the author makes you wonder how they are doing "today."

Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding, full of surprises, dreams
Review: Once in a while, I find myself so mesmerized by a book that I buy it in bulk to give to friends. Ann Patchett¹s The Magician¹s Assistant is one such read, an enchanting story that left me spellbound. It is a tale about appearance verses reality, a tale full of surprises crafted by Patchett¹s own sleight of hand. As the story begins, Parsifal the magician is dead. Sabine, his wife of five months, is in shock. She knew he would die but not from the aneurysm which occurred a few hours earlier. Sabine has loved Parsifal for 22 years, from the moment she laid down her waitress¹s tray and volunteered to assist with his magic act. Now, Parsifal¹s life has come to an abrupt halt, and we read and grieve with Sabine over her tremendous loss.Nine days after Parsifal¹s death, Sabine¹s phone rings. It is their lawyer. Parsifal, she is told, has left part of his estate to his mother and two sisters. Mother and two sisters? Parsifal told Sabine that he had no family, that there had been an accident years ago, and all were dead. Sabine, never given any details, had created her own version of the car crash that killed his entire family. ³Sabine made them out of bits of Parsifal¹s personality, characteristics of his face. She made their skin from the pale color of his skin. She put them together in her spare time, and when she had it exactly right, she arranged them in the car and sent them speeding towards their death.² With the lawyer¹s call, Sabine realizes her total belief in Parsifal has been an illusion, like the magic she helped him perform. Mother and sister arrive in California to meet Sabine, their only link to Parsifal¹s past. Shortly after their visit, Sabine sees that she now has ³eighteen untouched years... early, forgotten volumes of her favorite work. A childhood that could be mined month by month. Parsifal would not get older, but what about younger?²Sabine travels from sunny California to Alliance, Nebraska, birthplace of Parsifal born Guy Fetters. Alliance, where Sabine sees flat land and snow and ³streets lined in rows of tiny, identical ranch houses.² It is quite a contrast to Los Angeles with ³the scent of flowers and citrus that as recently as May had settled on her clothes and in her hair like a fine dust,² Sabine wonders as she drives through Alliance if it¹s the snow that makes every house look the same or ³was there something else under that white blanket?² Indeed there is and as the past unfolds, so do the lives of the Fetter family. By the time Sabine returns to California, the healing has begun, a healing that comes from her new founded knowledge of the man she loved, a man she thought she knew. There is another character in the novel by the name of Phan, a Vietnamese refuge who is dead, but plays a critical role in the relationship between Sabine and Parsifal. Sabine has a number of dreams about Phan, and it is through these dreams that she comes to accept death. Phan acts as her spiritual guide and Patchett¹s descriptions of this journey are wonderful. Her writing is so believable that I forgot I was reading about dreams. I wanted Sabine¹s illusions to be real.The Magician¹s Assistant can be read on many levels. Sabine and Parsival, the names themselves suggest a relationship between the ancient myths of the courageous Sabine women who stopped their fathers and husbands from killing each other, and Parsifal, who causes the Holy Grail to assume its consecrational powers. But this is a book review and not a dissertation. I know you¹ll enjoy The Magician¹s Assistant. As the author explains, magic is less about surprise than it is control. ³You lead them in one direction and then come up from behind their backs. They watch you, at every turn they will be suspicious, but you give them decoys. People long to be amazed, even as they fight it. Once you amaze them, you own them.² Patchett¹s performance certainly amazed me. Like I said at the start, I now own a lot of copies of this book

Rating:
Summary: The Sweetness of Intimacy Lost: A Book Review of The Magicia
Review: The Sweetness of Intimacy Lost: A Book Review of The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett, Harcourt Brace & Company, paperback p. 356.

This tale opens as Parsifal, the magician, dies. We are told of his previous day of an intense headache, and the short, claustrophobic stay in the MRI chamber. Parsifal's death by stroke was unexpected; he was preparing for an impending death due to AIDS-related complications, as did his love Phan, six months prior. At his death, he is accompanied by his wife, Sabine, his Magician's Assistant of 22 years and his wife of 6 months. Parsifal married her so that she would be taken care of following his death. Thus we enter an intriguing, unusual love story.

The shock of the death doesn't seem to dissipate throughout the book. The impact is compounded by Parsifal's previous life which comes to light upon his death. He had lied about his past.

This was a lovely story which unfolded beautifully, and is best unrecounted here; a gradual, descent into love lost and all the intimacy which goes with it awaits you, the reader.

Excellent use of dream sequences are skillfully used to bring Sabine to a place of resolution with Phan's life and death as well as her best friend and beloved Parsifal's death. Both Phan and Parsifal visit Sabine in her dream state; they are the beloved, the guides, the friends, the family, and they lend a voice of sanity to the situation she enters in Nebraska.

We go back in time to the 1960's, childhood, move forward to LA 1990's settings including an appearance on the Johnny Carson show, which is replayed nightly, in the home of Parsifal's family of origin, in Nebraska. The 1990's also hold memories of magical performances, the parties, the gay and glamorous LA life, the marriage party, the selection of the burial triad plot for Phan, Parsifal and Sabine, the anchoring goodness of Sabine's mother and father and pet Rabbit. All lend humanness to this bittersweet tale of unconventional love, remorse, forgiveness and letting go. The resulting relationship Sabine develops with Parsifal's family, is believable, with bouts confusion interspersed with bursts of clarity and well-written dialogue. " I don't care how you worked out being married. What I care about is that you knew him, you were there with him. You were with him all those years when I wasn't. You were with him when he died." Kitty stopped and considered this. "Were you?" she said, "right there with him?"

The ending stays true to form, leaving the reader with the sense of life might go on, or might just slide back. It leaves the hopeful room to hope and room for the despairing to despair..

Rating:
Summary: Well written - wacky premise
Review: Ann Patchett certainly knows how to write. Her sentences flow along in a highly readable fashion, and she is particularly good at pacing and creating a sense of place.

Told from the standpoint of a fortyish woman named Sabine who'd lived almost forever in the golden sun of Los Angeles, it's a story of enduring love. At age 19, while working as a waitress at a place called The Magic Hat during her college years, Sabine was summoned to the stage by a young magician named Parsifal to assist him in a magic trick. She was smitten at once, and a relationship between Sabine and Parsifal began that continued until Parsifal's death immediately before the opening sentence of the book. As the book unfolds, we learn pieces of Parsifal's nature (like Cher, he had but the one name), their long-term relationship, and Parsifal's family.

Parsifal did magic, with Sabine as his assistant, part-time (his day job was buying and selling Oriental rugs; hers was making architectural models). Then, a good twenty years after they met and about six months before he died, Parsifal and Sabine married (she took the name Mrs. Sabine Parsifal).

Theirs was no ordinary relationship and no ordinary marriage. For Parsifal, you see, was a homosexual. For a brief time early on, Sabine was frustrated by the incompleteness of their relationship, but because she loved him so much, she quickly came to accept the portion of affection he could give her. She had lovers here and there, none serious enough to capture her heart, but Parsifal had lovers who did capture his heart, most notably, and lastly, a Vietnamese named Phan who died of AIDS.

After Parsifal died of a sudden aneurism before AIDS got him, Sabine learned from his lawyer that everything he had told her about his background was a lie. His family name wasn't Petrie, he wasn't from Connecticut, and his family hadn't perished in a car crash. His name originally was Guy Fetters, he was from a small town in Nebraska, and he had a mother (Dot) and two sisters (Kitty, married with two sons, and Bertie) still living.

Sabine soon traveled to Nebraska in order to get in touch with the part of Parsifal's life that had been hidden from her. There she became involved in the lives of the rest of the family, discovered family secrets, and found contentment in an unlikely place.

As well as the book is written, the story has oddities that show a lapse on the part of Patchett and her editor. These range from the simple -- Sabine's poking among Parsifal's business papers and coming across employee 1040's [come on, 1040's are tax returns which he had no business seeing] when Patchett meant W-2's ' to the major -- the lawyer's telling Sabine that there was a 'letter in the will' whose provisions came as a shock to him, setting up as it did trusts for the previously unknown mother and sisters that reduced Sabine's inheritance [there's no such thing as a 'letter in the will,' and there's nothing in a will of which the lawyer would be unaware. After all, lawyers are the ones who draw up wills, in carefully crafted language to assure the client's wishes will be met. A letter 'to be opened upon my death' (?) has no real legal effect, and stands on weaker legs still if it contradicts the provisions in a will]. There are other problems as well, some worse than others, but all sadly tending to erode the credibility of the story.

These nit-picky criticisms aside, the story has a certain charm. There's a pervading sense of gentleness as seen in Sabine's acceptance of Parsifal and their relationship (not to mention his relationships with other men), in the Fetters family's ready acceptance of Sabine, and particularly in Dot's devotion to her children.

It is too bad, then, that the premise doesn't make sense. Are we to believe that a healthy woman never felt love fixated on a homosexual man ebbing away over such a span of years, when she pursued love affairs, and when she watched this man she loved become enamored of other men, leaving her the outsider? Are we to believe that a life of her own never called to her? Are we to believe that her parents supported this? And whatever was the point of their marriage?

Even more perplexing are Parsifal's / Guy Fetters' relations with his family. The abusive father has been done to boredom. But his mother Dot, the character most fully realized, was a steadfast, loving woman, and as a boy Guy was quite close to Kitty, the older of his sisters. Once the father was out of the way, it didn't seem logical that he would erase from his life, entirely and forever, these two people who cared deeply for him, and for whom he cared deeply (certainly his sister).

I wish, too, that Patchett had given us more complex characters, but they are all (check one) perfect or bad.

The same is true of Patchett's contrast between Los Angeles and Nebraska. I don't have a stake in either place, but I know L.A. isn't 'the promised land' and Nebraska isn't 'a dead state.'

Overall, I came away feeling I'd been pointed by my book club at a well-written, but ultimately superficial story by an author with promise as yet unfulfilled. Patchett knows how to put ideas down on paper -- what she needs now is to learn what to put down.

Rating:
Summary: A deceivingly simple story works its magic
Review: The first thing you notice when reading The Magician's Assistant is that Ann Patchett really cares for her characters. She quietly nurtures them, even the minor ones, and offers the reader a gentle yet revealing view of their complex lives.

At the opening of the novel, Parsifal the magician, has suddenly died and Sabine, his assistant of twenty years and recently his wife, is trying to cope with her loss. Their relationship had always been a unique one - Sabine loved him and dedicated her life to him despite his inability to love her in the same way: he was gay. What complicates her grief is the discovery that Parsifal has family living in Nebraska - a mother and two sisters - family he had always told her died many years earlier in an accident. In fact, everything she knows about the history of his life, turns out to be a fabricated story. As Sabine struggles to comprehend the reasons for Parisfal's deceptions, she embarks on an emotional journey, traveling to Nebraska to try and connect with the Parsifal she never knew through the family she never knew he had.

Patchett effectively uses two elements throughout the book that bind this story together: the dream world and the world of magic. Descriptions of Sabine's dreams, where she reunites with Parsifal as well as his gay lover Phan, are used to relate Sabine's emotional awakenings as she forms relationships with Parsifal's family and learns of his early life; the magic that Parsifal and Sabine performed throughout their union serves as the tool that brings Parsifal's family an understanding of the son/brother they lost years ago.

Lovingly written and gracefully rendered, The Magician's Assistant is a deceivingly simple book and a very rewarding experience.

Rating:
Summary: Best novel of loss ever.....
Review: I am amazed at the 'average 4-star rating' listed for this book. It is flat out the best book of loss ever. I send this book to anyone who has lost a loved one. It is on my Desert Island book list, for sure; and I am a two-book-a-week fiction junkie. Bittersweet, haunting, hopeful, uplifting, funny.....the full package.

Rating:
Summary: Problem with the ending
Review: Patchett is an exceptional writer but possessive of a flaw that more and more authors have. Bad endings. Advertisers will tell you that just when an advertising agency and client have grown tired of an ad and pull it from the air is when readers and viewers are getting accustomed to it and picking up its message. An author who takes two years to write a book may grow tired of his or her characters but the reader who reads the book in a week may not have. The author wants to wrap things up neatly and quickly at about page 350. The reader wants a more complex ending. Great books have both great stories and great endings. I loved The Magician's Assistant but, sadly because of its ending, must rate it only good.

Rating:
Summary: It could have been so much more...
Review: I LOVED "Bel Canto" and had high hopes for this book. As I began, I thought the characters were lovingly drawn and that the only reason the book felt a little flat was because we're seeing everything through Sabine's numb and grief stricken eyes.

Yet as the book continues, that flat, superficial feeling never really goes away. We learn that the love of Sabine's life, Parsifal, could do no wrong even though he lied to Sabine about his past and did other horrible, though understandable things. We learn that Nebraska and snow are the definition of hell on earth and that Los Angeles and those who live there are perfect - their only flaws being insignificant ones.

We learn that Sabine is one of the most clueless people on Earth, even after having travelled the world, having met hundreds of people, and after having lived 44 years in an international city like LA. I so started to doubt what I was experiencing through her that when she has her big emotional "breakthrough" - I didn't believe it.

The ending is another of those "I guess I've written enough pages so I'll stop here" endings. Sigh.

Patchett's writing is lyrical and so wonderful to read - I just feel that this book wasn't fleshed out enough. There just wasn't enough of a story or an ending to put it in the same league as "Bel Canto".

I guess I'll just wait for her next book.

Rating:
Summary: Had promise but didn't measure up in the end
Review: I was drawn in by the characters and their relationships. I think the author told the story well, but then the plot took a couple strange turns, and not necessarily what I think were for the best. The ending was abrupt and a letdown. Did the author have a deadline to meet and rushed the ending? That's what it seems like.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Beautiful
Review: This book moved me so deeply. Ann Patchett is a true artist. She intertwines realistic journeys into grief, dream sequences, touching human interaction, and flashbacks to craft a magnificent story. One of the best, most beautiful books I have ever read!