Details
Synopsis
For 20 years Sabine was the assistant of the magician, Parsifal. Deeply in love with him despite his homosexuality, she had to settle for his friendship. After his death, Sabine learns that Parsifal has surviving relatives in Nebraska, so she decides to visit them in an attempt to learn more about his past. In the place where her beloved came of age, she slowly pieces together the mystery of the magician's life, and finds herself drawn into the tangled webs of affection and tragedy that drove Parsifal to reinvent himself in the first place.
| Size | | Length: | 357 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 21.6 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story."
Industry Reviews
"This engaging, supple plot is played out against a backdrop of dreams, flashbacks, and long, elliptical conversations....With her quiet playfulness, Sabine's touch is as light and sure as that of the author who created her."
Boston Book Review - Kate Tuttle (11/19/1997)
"[T]he kindliness of 'The Magician's Assistant' is beguiling, and Patchett is an adroit, graceful writer who knows enough tricks to keep her story entertaining....The real appeal...lies in the small, accumulating ways in which Sabine and the Fetters family assist one another out of isolation and sorrow. By the end, they have all been somewhat transformed--yes, by the magic of love."
New York Times Book Review - Suzanne Berne (11/16/1997)
"The [characters] have a wonderfulness that collectively can be unnerving. But mostly they ARE wonderful, as well as individual, smart and battling hard. There is something of allegory in Patchett's novel. There are times when its insistent current toward redemption risks flooding the life along the way, and there is a suggestion of the author's hand hovering at the sluice gate. Rarely does it do more than hover, though: rarely does the flood level do more than lap at the ingenious life and liveliness that Patchett has devised."
Los Angeles Times Book Review - Richard Eder (10/19/1997)
"Magicians--and their assistants--may be masters of misdirection and slight of hand, but novelist Ann Patchett is the real thing. Patchett does have a trick or two up her sleeve...--her controlled, evocative prose for one; the uncanny way she makes the most surprising twists seem absolutely inevitable; not to mention the wisdom and tenderness with which she portrays the illusions that keep lovers and families together and those that rend them apart."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Alix Madrigal (11/02/1997)
"Masterful in evoking everything from the good life in L.A. to the bleaker one on the Great Plains...: a saga of redemption tenderly and terrifically told."
Stimpson
"...Patchett's third and finest novel....Patchett's lush and suspenseful story is also a portrait of America..."
Kleinzahler
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