From Publishers Weekly
An inept African-American illusionist is dogged by the deal he struck with the devil in Wallace's fourth novel, a circus picaresque that barnstorms its way through the 1950s American South. Henry Walker, once the "greatest magician in the world," has been reduced to a minstrel show–like novelty act in a traveling circus. Henry's story, told by a succession of narrators—including members of the circus and a private detective—begins during the Depression, when Henry's family fell on hard times. While down and out, Henry meets and apprentices with the devilish magician Mr. Sebastian. Henry learns the secrets of magic, but his ambition and ability are crimped when his beloved sister, Hannah, disappears. The truths of Henry's and Mr. Sebastian's identities and the fate of Hannah are gradually revealed, and what appears to be a Faustian tale of a pact with the devil turns out to be something more tragic. Wallace (
Big Fish;
The Watermelon King) skillfully unravels the tale, and though the conclusion is both startling and inevitable, and Henry is as beguiling and enigmatic a character as Wallace has created, the milieu of carnies, hucksters, tricksters and wanderers isn't as sharp as it could be.
(July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The author of the popular
Big Fish (1998) brings a touch of the surreal to his ongoing examination of flawed father-son relationships. Henry Walker has fallen far from his glory days in the 1940s as a master illusionist. Hired a decade later as a sideshow act in Jeremiah Mosgrove's Chinese Circus, which tours small southern towns, Walker has been reduced to an act consisting of one ineptly performed trick after another. It wasn't always the case. As the strongman tells it, Henry was the son of a rich businessman who lost everything during the Depression. Hired to work as a janitor at a fancy hotel, he takes to the bottle. Henry and his sister, Hannah, fall prey to the charms of the man in room 720, who teaches Henry magic tricks and may be the devil himself. Ultimately, Hannah disappears, and a brokenhearted Henry is talked into performing as a black man in a bid to popularize his act. Wallace's fractured fairy tale may strike readers new to the author as somewhat gimmicky; it will appeal to his fan base.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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