Product Description

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-a 1990s love story with the grace and charm of a nineteenth-century novel” (Newsweek).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17907 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 357 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780156006217
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
The Magician's Assistant sustains author Ann Patchett's proven penchant for crafting colorful characters and marrying the ordinary with the fantastic. When Parsifal, Sabine's husband of more than 20 years and the magician of the title, suddenly dies, she begins to discover how she's glimpsed him only through smoke and mirrors. He has managed to keep hidden the existence of a family in Nebraska--his mother, two sisters, and two nephews. Sabine approaches them hungrily, as if they are a bridge to her beloved husband and a key to the mysteries he left behind.

From Publishers Weekly
After working as his assistant for more than 20 years, Sabine marries her beloved boss, Parcifal, knowing that he's gay and has just lost his lover. What she doesn't find out until after his death from AIDS is that Parcifal was actually Guy Fettera from Alliance, Neb., and had a family he never spoke about. Karen Ziemba creates an appropriately light tone for the narrator, despite some dark events that Sabine discovers when she visits Parcifal's sweet, dysfunctional family. She crafts clear, flat Midwest accents for the magician's mother and sisters and her pace and annunciation are excellent. Ziemba's men all sound alike, but they play minimal roles. She is an experienced and professional reader with just the right stuff for Patchett's 1997 novel, which probes the complex motives of Parcifal and his assistant. A Harcourt paperback (Reviews, July 14, 1997)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal
For two decades, Sabine has loved the magician Parsifal and served as his assistant. Theirs is an unorthodox relationship, however, for Parsifal loves men. When Parsifal's lover dies of AIDS, he marries Sabine so that she will be his widow. When Parsifal dies, Sabine receives some surprising news about his will. Believing her husband to have no living relatives, she is shocked to learn of a trust fund established for a mother and two sisters in Nebraska. When his family contacts her, she introduces them to the Los Angeles Parsifal. She then visits them in Nebraska to discover the truth about the man she loved and thought she knew, gaining insight into herself as well. Well written and full of interesting twists, this is recommended for larger collections.?Kimberly G. Allen, networkMCI Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Parsifal is dead. That's the beginning of the story.
Ann Patchett, who lives in rural seclusion with her pet raccoons (at least according to the profile in Modern Tennessean), is so good I wish she wrote the morning paper. That way I could wake up and read her sentences all day long.

If you've glanced at the editorials above, you know the novel's plot. Two of the most fascinating characters are already dead when we begin reading; they occupy the heroine's dreams, refusing to rest like peaceful corpses should. Among her other talents, Patchett is masterful with adolescents-- a notoriously tough breed to write about. And she's excellent with violence, too. Not the habitual, ritual violence of genre fiction, but the quick, mean violence of unhappy men.

I don't want to tell you too much. Read the book. If you don't like it, e-mail me and complain about what an idiot I am.

I don't think I'll be hearing from you.

Best novel of loss ever.....
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.

"Magic is sometimes like love."
Subtle, beautiful, poignant prose--if you're like me, you were starting to wonder if it could still be found in a book written in the 90s. Here it is. Never mind the plot, which has none of the knife-blade intensity we're so used to these days. And never mind the characters, which are unique and real, though not particularly complex or surprising. Read this book for the sentences, the paragraphs, the feelings and descriptions and quiet inner musings of the Magician's Assistant herself, the ultimate almost-X-gen expert in not-quite-tragic infatuation, Sabine Parsifal. This book is as much poem as novel. The voices echo eerily, as if you'd heard every line in the "real" world but you can't remember where. On the other hand, if subtlety and unending depression bore you, or positive portrayals of homosexual relationships freak you out, better skip this title and head for the bestseller list instead.