Review by Booklist Review
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 Wilkinson Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
As with Big Fish and The Watermelon King, Wallace offers here a Southern novel full of whimsy and folklore. Clearly influenced by Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, Wallace tells the story of Henry Walker, a magician with Jeremiah Musgrove's Chinese Circus in the 1950s South. As a boy in Albany, NY, Henry learned magic from the pasty-faced Mr. Sebastian, believing his mentor to be the devil, and lost his beloved sister as a result. Through his travels, Henry constantly loses those he cares about. As Wallace slowly reveals that the supernatural has less to do with Henry's fate than he thinks, the story grows more powerful. This captivating morality tale is told from multiple points of view well narrated by Norman Dietz, L.J. Ganser, Katherine Kellgren, T. Ryder Smith, Tom Stechschulte, and, especially, Alyssa Bresnahan, whose character's unrequited love for Henry is particularly poignant. Highly recommended for all collections.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-During the Depression, 10-year-old Henry Walker meets Mr. Sebastian in the run-down hotel where they live. The man teaches Henry the art of prestidigitation, but at a price as the boy's beloved sister disappears-as does Mr. Sebastian. Then, after decades of performing in blackface as the Negro Magician, Walker himself disappears, and his friends in the small-time traveling circus that is now his venue try to piece his story together, all of them sure that they know the true version. Each individual sheds some light on the illusionist's life, until the carefully crafted imaginings are nothing more than a sad tale about a doomed man. The strengths of the novel are the unexpected twists that it takes. The hook comes in the early pages, with the more magical stories; the unfolding of the truth will engage readers. Set in the American South in the middle of the 20th century, this book about a tortured soul is quality storytelling.-Mary Ann Harlan, Arcata High School, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A magician conjures abject failure in Wallace's (The Watermelon King, 2003, etc.) bleak fourth. Glum protagonist Henry Walker is first seen as a ten year old growing up in a dismal hotel where his drunken father toils as a janitor (after losing his fortune to the Crash and his wife to TB). Henry's sister is his dearest companion until he encounters Mr. Sebastian in Room 702. An otherworldly man with a chalk-white complexion, Sebastian trains Henry in the dark arts, then disappears, spiriting Hannah away. After a police investigation turns up no clues, Henry's father reluctantly apprentices him to a talent agent, Tom Hailey, who, thinking Henry will be more marketable as a Negro magician, places him on a regimen of pigmentation pills. World War II intervenes and Henry (white again) garners a rep for magically deflecting bullets and bombs in France. Upon landing in New York Harbor, he's taken up by an ambitious manager, Eddie Kastenbaum. However, when Henry raises his beloved assistant, and Hannah surrogate, Marianne, from the dead, his career tanks prematurely. In dreamlike sequences, Henry revisits Room 702, trying to parse the enigma of Hannah and Mr. Sebastian. Is Mr. Sebastian really the Devil? Did he murder Hannah? Did Henry kill Mr. Sebastian with a stunt knife? A private eye and the denizens of a traveling Southern circus where Henry has washed up--his magical powers much diminished--narrate their recollections and speculations over an 11-day period in May 1954. The voices of the individual narrators, including the circus proprietor, a strongman and a lady of stone, are as unconvincing as their motives in caring so deeply about Henry, an aloof cipher in their midst. The framing incident, which opens and closes the novel, is the abduction of Henry (now in blackface) by three racist thugs who beat him nearly to death, stopping only when someone accidentally wipes the shoe polish from his face. Quietly elegiac but unnecessarily convoluted tale of missed connections and rotten luck. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
