The Magician's Assistant Book

The Magician's Assistant and other best sellers. Great prices on The Magician's Assistant and other best selling books. To find additional books browse the Book categories, or use the search box at the top of this page.

by: Ann Patchett

See Larger Image


Customer Reviews
Average Rating: Rating: - One Of The Best Modern Novels I Have Ever Read This book is so wonderful, it is difficult to find words to describe it. The main character, Sabine, a former magician's assistant , sets out to find the truth about her dead husband Parsifal, with whom she was achingly in love. Her search for truth leads her into a foreign world-- Nebraska in the dead of winter. Sound depressing? It is not in any way! Ann Patchett's prose is a revelation. I read this book in 1999, and I savored every page not wanting it to ever end. This book is for anyone who has ever been in love, and once you read it, you will find it hard to find another novel that compares to it's beauty and simplicity and power. I have been looking for one as good for 2 years and I haven't found one yet. To call it a triumph is an understatement. Just read it, and you will agree. Rating: - This is an extraordinary, remarkable and original book. This book was recommended to me by my now-worshipped local bookseller. It has been a long time--longer than I care to remember--since I have been so infatuated with a book and with the evident talent of its author. I don't think I've read anything as good as this in over ten years. This lovely, impressive book about the nature of love seems to me utterly unique and of the highest possible standard. Ann Patchett has written a book that is entirely compelling and magical in the spell it casts. Her characters and descriptions are so memorable that nine months after reading it, I can still remember almost everything. A writer who can achieve this kind of magic is a kind of wizard herself, and I have bought her two other books and am starting to read them. If you have been disillusioned with many other highly praised novels, as I have, then try Ann Patchett. I can't imagine she can disappoint. This is a book about love, and the myriad forms love takes; it is a book that radiates love. It is, I think, an irreplaceable, invaluable book. I recommend it for anything that ails you and anything that doesn't. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer Rating: - A deceivingly simple story works its magic 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.

The Magician's Assistant Book

Related Book Searches