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    The Magician's Assistant
    The Magician's Assistant
    The Magician's Assistant
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Magician's Assistant

    Written by Ann Patchett

    Narrated by Karen Ziemba

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the bestselling author of The Dutch House, 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.” (Newsweek)

    When Parsifal, a handsome and charming magician, dies suddenly, his widow Sabine—who was also his faithful assistant for twenty years—learns that the family he claimed to have lost in a tragic accident is very much alive and well. Sabine is left to unravel his secrets, and the journey she takes, from sunny Los Angeles to the bitter windswept plains of Nebraska, will work its own magic on her.

    Sabine's extraordinary tale, “with its big dreams, vast spaces, and disparate realities lying side by side” captures the hearts of its readers and “proves to be the perfect place for miraculous transformations.” (The New Yorker)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 13, 2008
    ISBN9780061632563
    Author

    Ann Patchett

    ANN PATCHETT is the author of eight novels: The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, and The Dutch House as well as three books of nonfiction: Truth & Beauty, about her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, What Now? an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College, and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays examining the theme of commitment.

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    Reviews for The Magician's Assistant

    4/5

    86 ratings71 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Well written and pleasant to listen to but nothing extraordinary. However, I found the conversations and dream sequences with the dead wonderful.
    • 4/5
      The ending was sudden left a lot of assumptions. The music was kind of weird but okay overall was a good read
    • 4/5
      a different kind of story about love and friendship and family and how far we can go; well done
    • 4/5
      Sabine’s husband, the famous magician Parsifal, has died. They had been together as close friends and as a professional team for over twenty years, although they’d only been married for about six months. Sabines struggles with her grief and with several discoveries about the man she thought she knew so well.The rather desultory plot (Sabine finds a family) isn’t the draw here. Patchett’s writing and character development overcome a rather trite story and make for an absorbing read.
    • 1/5
      Why did I even waste my time with this book. It took me 9 days to read it because it never really grabbed me and pulled me in. I kept hoping that it would. It drove me crazy how Sabine settled for a life with a gay couple as the third wheel instead of going out and having a life. Then she could barely have a life after Parsifal dies. The no chapters thing was frustrating. I like to have the little breaks. Also, the dream sequences were a little confusing.

      I also didn't care for how the author portrayed the Midwest and Nebraska. I grew up in a small Iowa town and now live in Kansas City and she has it totally wrong about Nebraska or any Midwest state being "dead." We have clean air, friendly people, beautiful countryside and in my hometown you could leave your groceries in your unlocked car with the window down and nothing would be stolen. We never locked our house...NEVER. Also, if you got caught in a rainstorm, you could throw your bike in the back of a friend/neighbor's pickup truck that is sitting in their driveway with the keys in it and drive home. Then bring the truck back later. It was no big deal. So that my friend is the way I would rather live than in a big city like LA or NY. Now I will spend my time on a book that is actually going to pull me into the story and care for the characters because I didn't care for any of these characters at all.
    • 4/5
      Slightly disappointed with the ending, but otherwise loved this book.
    • 3/5
      I love Ann Patchett but if I wasn't familiar with her type of storytelling I couldn't have finished this. Premise is incredibly boring and the easy, limitless wealth was unrelatable (ha). I thought the magician bits were way too sensationalized. That being said I did enjoy the story, and mostly just wish the author had thrown in a very hot scene near the end ;)
    • 4/5
      I liked everything except the end. Is this turning into an Ann Patchett pattern?
    • 4/5
      As an Ann Patchett fan, I was not disappointed by this book. It is an earlier work of hers and lacks some of the complexity and depth of her more recent pieces, but at its heart are unforgettable characters. In vintage Patchett fashion, she is able to transport the reader to completely alien realms -- the life of a magician and his assistant, and the life of a family struggling on the winter prairie in the Mid West.
    • 4/5
      A very good story.Several storylines offshoot from the main characters of Sabine,Parsifal,the magician and Phan.A story of the magician and his wife and partner. After Parsifal's death there are secrets revealed abt his life and his wife seeks them out.Well written and highly recommended.My first Patchett book.Give this book 100 pages as it does start a bit slow,but worth your time.
    • 4/5
      Read this Sunday. My poor husband only saw a sliver of face most of the day. Nice pacing, interesting character development. However, I wonder why, when the publishing companies are saving so much money on publishing costs (read this on my Kindle) they cannot have at least one person read over the text for scanning mistakes--many words were replaced with symbols [ ")f" for "if" for example)AND either Patchett is a fine writer without actually knowing what the words mean or the type setter needs to have a few more lessons—“feint” is not the same word as “faint.” This was annoying. I sugggest the bound book version.
    • 5/5
      Effortless read. Ann Patchett's writing and full development of her characters (even those characters no longer living), pulled me in and kept me with them from the beginning to the very end.
    • 5/5
      From the beginning, this book pulled me into the world of Patchett's magician's assistant and left me entranced with the various landscapes and characters. Boomeranging gently between horrifyingly mundane tragedies and magical scenes of dreams and magic, the book explores the aftershocks of a man's death as those who loved him most learn about the life he experienced when not with them, and about each other. Full of humor and beauty, the work is still one of the most transporting and realistic depictions of grief that I've seen, and Patchett's writing is wonder-full. I've seen reviewers note that the symbolism is too heavy, but I would say that, no, it's realistic to the way symbols appear and are interpreted in our everyday lives. Simply, you might not find that this work changes your life, or even provides any sort of an escape from reality. For me, though, it shows a sort of hope and a beauty in the world we all know, and in the experiences that we so often say we'd rather forget, however much they make our futures.When I was younger, I wouldn't have appreciated this. Now, I can simply say that I find it perfect and worthwhile in every way, and that I'll be a fan of Patchett from here on out. Absolutely recommended.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book a long and but there are a few things that keep me from rating it higher. The biggest of those things is what I felt to be a very dissatisfying ending.

      I’d still recommend it to friends, though. I’d give it a 3.5 stars but rounding down.
    • 4/5
      Sabine has spent her entire life pining after the one man she could never have. She’s spent years working as a magician’s assistant for Parsifal, but he is gay and can never return her love in the way she wants. She was close friends with both him and his partner Phan. After Phan’s death she and Parsifal marry for companionship and so that she will inherit his home. When he passes away she finds out he was not orphaned as he claimed, but has a whole family in Nebraska who want to meet her. This strange premise is not at all what I was expecting. I think I thought it would be a bit like The Prestige or something, set in the 1800s and full of intrigue. Instead it’s a quiet story of grief and love and the many forms that both of those things come in. The grief aspect of the novel was actually the most interesting to me. I felt like Patchett captured its confusing nature well. One moment you’re in shock, another you’re unable to function, yet another you’re sappy with memories or regrets. Its mercurial forms can leave a person reeling and I think Sabine was struggling with that. It’s a tribute to Patchett’s writing that I enjoyed this one as much as I did. It’s certainly not my favorite or her novels, but like her other books it’s so characters driven that the odd plot doesn’t really detract from it. I disliked the ending, which felt a bit too contrived for me, but that seems to be a trademark of Patchett’s. Many people felt the same way about Bel Canto. BOTTOM LINE: Read it if you already love her work. If you’re new to her, start with Bel Canto, a gorgeously written story, or with her nonfiction book Truth & Beauty, an ode to her friendship with a fellow writer. This one isn’t bad, but it never comes together as well as those others.  
    • 5/5
      So far I haven't read an Ann Patchett I didn't like. The plotting is lovely, the characters are lovely, the slight elements of magic or sparkle are lovely too. I think maybe Run is still my favourite, just by a little edge, but this is a pretty near thing.
    • 5/5
      I'm not sure that I liked the ending (which was maybe meant to be open-ended but felt rather abrupt), but I loved the message the book sends out. Family is what you make it and love is what you make it. Yes, you can be straight, married to someone who is gay and happily in love with the other man in your house. They can love each other, you can love them and it isn't full of the typical love triangle junk that most books in this three-people-in-one-house situation will throw at you. Brilliant, just brilliant and such a welcome relief.Family grief is the key of this book. A man's genetic family is missing him greatly, not just because he disappeared on them, but because he died and they have only just found out. What happens after they contact his wife is a pure journey in emotional discovery and acceptance, without being at all overpowering or so dripping with said emotions that the pages are soggy with your own tears. Easy to see how it got the attention of the Women's Prize list makers.
    • 4/5
      Digital audio book performed by Karen Ziemba3.5***From the book jacket: Sabine – twenty years a magician’s assistant to her handsome, charming husband – is suddenly a widow. In the wake of his death, she finds he has left a final trick: a false identity and a family allegedly lost in a tragic accident but now revealed as very much alive and well. Named as heirs in his will, they enter Sabine’s life and set her on an adventure of unraveling his secrets, from sunny Los Angeles to the windswept plains of Nebraska, that will work its own sort of magic on her. My reactions:The first book by Patchett that I read was Bel Canto, and I was struck with how masterfully she portrayed those characters. Once again, I marvel at Patchett’s skill in drawing fully realized characters. Even the deceased – Parsifal, Phan, Albert – are alive in the way they are remembered by Sabine, by Dot, or by Kitty. The story unfolds in bits and pieces, much as it would in real life. You don’t tell everything at once to someone you’ve just met, and likewise Sabine keeps some things to herself in describing her years with Parsifal to his mother, and Dot keeps key bits of information from Sabine in relating Parsifal/Guy’s childhood. In this way, the reader feels the same hesitancy as these characters. And yet, their ultimate decisions seem correct and reasonable, even when relayed as abrupt and hasty.I also really liked how the environment affects their actions. Sabine is a different person in sunny Los Angeles than she is in snowy Nebraska. Karen Ziemba does a fine job performing the audio book. She has good pacing and a facility for voices that made it clear who each character was.
    • 5/5
      Loved the characters. Loved the writing. There was a lot that kept me entranced with the book, despite the occasional slow bits. I thought the development of Sabine was handled wonderfully, as her love story slowly unfolded. The depiction of life in Nebraska in winter was great, too, showing the grimness and isolation of a small town enfolded in snow through the eyes of a California girl. I thought using the dreams was strange, and by the end, when Kitty appeared in one, too, I knew that the technique had just gone too far. Well worth the read; I actually liked it better than I had expected to.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. The pov character is so appealing, and the writing is just stunning. One of the few new books I want to stay with way past its ending.
    • 4/5
      “It was one thing to have spent your life in love with a man who could not return the favor, but it was another thing entirely to love a man you didn’t even know.” — Ann Patchett, “The Magician’s Assistant”For Sabine, the beautiful magician’s assistant, both of these things turn out to be true. She loved Parsifal, the magician, almost from the time he made her part of his act, and in time he married her. Yet he never loved her in the way he loved Phan, the wealthy Vietnamese man he slept with every night while Sabine slept alone. His marriage was just a part of his act.As “The Magician’s Assistant,” Ann Patchett’s 1997 novel, begins, Sabine is alone in that big California house that is now hers. Both men have died, Phan from AIDS and Parsifal from a brain aneurism. Her husband had told her he was an orphan from Connecticut with no remaining family. Now she learns his mother and two sisters have been living in Nebraska all this time and that his real name was Guy Fetters.Why had he lied to her? The mystery deepens when his mother, Dot Fetters, and one sister, Bertie, having been notified of his death by a lawyer, come to California to meet the wife they didn’t even know he had. Sabine finds them to be pleasant, quite ordinary women. So why had he pretended they didn't even exist?A magician knows how to hide secrets, but a magician's assistant learns those secrets as she learns the act. Often she is the one who makes the magic happen while the magician waves his arms and keeps the audience focused elsewhere. And so Sabine, when she later visits the Fetters home in Nebraska, gradually learns the secrets Parsifal had tried so hard to keep hidden.That home had been marked by discord and violence when Guy Fetters was a boy, and so it is now. Where before it was his father who was the source of the trouble, now it is Howard, the husband of Kitty, the older sister who looks so much like Parsifal. Howard's very presence in the house seems to put everyone on edge.Sabine turns out to be a pretty good magician in her own right, but her most challenging trick may be trying to bring peace to this broken family, whose idea of a good time is watching a tape of an old Johnny Carson show on which Parsifal and Sabine had appeared years before. They watch it every night almost as an act of worship. Their idea of a night out is going to Wal-Mart. "It's a very romantic place, really," Kitty tells her.While Sabine works her magic on the Fetters family, the family works its own magic on her, easing her sense of loss and abandonment.This was Patchett's third novel, and two decades later it holds up very well.
    • 4/5
      For the past twenty years, Sabine has been on the sidelines: the magician's assistant, there for looks and misdirection but "she was never the reason." The same holds true in her own life, as she has been hopelessly in love with her gay magician Parsifal, living platonically with him and his partner Phan. But when Parsifal dies unexpectedly, Sabine is on her own - nobody's assistant. Furthermore, Parsifal's death reveals that he lied about his family; they did not die in a car crash but still live in the same tiny town in Nebraska where Parsifal grew up. Sabine, without a purpose other than to know, must follow up on this news.The small town inertia of Alliance, Nebraska serves as a foil for Sabine's former life in her glamorous LA home. Yet this tension drives character growth: the ambiguous interplay between past and present. Nobody can fully discard the past (as much as Parsifal tried and Sabine might grievingly long to) without throwing away an instrumental part of themselves, for better or for worse. On the flip side, to what extent can one cling to the past before it becomes inhibiting? Sabine's arrival stirs her Nebraskan inlaws, who believe her to be a minor celebrity. The thrilling impossibility of magic mirrors the family's thrilling impossibility of change: if only she could leave her abusive husband, if only she were more confident in her relationship, if only the town were interested in expanding beyond its small town culture (read: a Walmart and little else). Yet change is scary, a drastic measure sometimes only forced by drastic times. And the equilibrium of continuity with the past and yielding to the future is difficult but necessary to strike.
    • 4/5
      Delightful and quirky contemporary novel. Story of a gentle, timid soul who goes through life latching her fortunes to other, larger characters. Only downside for me were too many dream sequences. Some of our book group felt she was too wimpish for sympathy and didn't have enough character development as the story progressed. In contrast, I found it true to life.
    • 3/5
      My Sunday afternoon read this week, and a bit of a disappointment. I liked the concept, but the writing made it all come across as far too neat and straightforward. How lovely life is in Los Angeles where you don't even need to do your own cooking; how dreary it is in Nebraska, where they have to shop at Walmart. Yes, right. On the positive side, this is a mainstream American novel published nearly twenty years ago that features a gay couple (albeit both dead) among its main characters. And the work of the magician's assistant is presented very convincingly.On the other hand, the plot moves along with all the inevitability of a rumbling American freight train, and the dream sequences that are supposed to inject a bit of tension come over more like advertisements for luxury travel.
    • 4/5
      I heard a review on NPR of Ann Patchett's latest book, and decided to check her out. The description of this book seemed to be a slightly simpler storyline, so decided to check it out. Her characters are fascinating. The heroine, Sabine, seems to be a person unable to fully embody a life of her own. She lived with and worked for years with the love of her life, a gay magician. She took care of him and his lover as both were dying of AIDS, and married him late in his life to make all his legal and medical issues easier to handle. In the book, she discovers that he actually had a family he had never mentioned living mundane lives in the Midwest. Quirky story, but enjoyably told.
    • 3/5
      Easy read, fairly predictable. I thought the stuff about the magic was the most interesting. Parsifal's family was normal and consequently uninteresting. I felt a lack of closure at the end.
    • 2/5
      If covers were all that a book was judged upon, then Hourglass would surely have won a Pulitzer or some other prestigious award. Sadly, it seems the efforts of the author do not really equal the talent that the artist has put into creating the engrossing cover.For a story that seems to sell itself on the paranormal or of secret organizations, very little seems to actually dwell on either. If anything, the author seems to have found more inspiration from Twilight; if nothing else, for its paranormal love triangle. Strange apparitions that the protagonist sees, are explained blithely, while pages are devoted on the 'electric' attraction that she feels for the mysterious (but attractive) male.I guess a reader raised on The Hunger Games and/or The Twilight Saga wouldn't feel something like this as out of place. But if one were expecting something more on the speculative side of fiction, they should brace themselves for a slog.
    • 3/5
      I'm a very big fan of Ann Patchett; her book "Bel Canto" may be one of my favorite pieces of contemporary fiction. "The Magician's Assistant" may not have been quite as good as "Bel Canto", but it was still a delightful read. One of the best parts of Patchett's writing is that her characters are always fully developed, and she is able to place you inside the mind of each character with no more than a few words. It was no different with Sabine, the main character of "The Magician's Assistant." The story itself is far more leisurely than Patchett's other novels. It is the story of a lost love; of grief, remembrance, and a slow discovery. That said, I was not once tempted to set the book aside for another one. Only the end left me slightly disappointed--a few ends were left hanging loose, and not knowing drives me crazy. ;-)
    • 3/5
      The basics: At the beginning of the novel, Parcifal, the magician of the novel's title, dies suddenly. Sabine, the assistant of the title, is left to grieve.My thoughts: After having loved State of Wonder, Bel Canto, and Run, I was convinced Ann Patchett was one of my literary soul sisters who could do no wrong. Sadly, I didn't connect with The Magician's Assistant at all, and I struggled to even finish the novel. My problems with this novel really begin with Sabine. While I'm normally an empathetic reader, I found myself instead wanting to shake Sabine. She fell in love with Parcifal years ago and worked as his assistant for more than twenty years. Parcifal, however, is gay, and he was in love with Phan, who died of AIDS. Parcifal was also sick with AIDS, and he and Sabine were preparing for his death, but something else killed him. As Sabine is dealing with her grief, I failed to understand her weakness. Her behavior seemed to be that of a teenager or woman in her early twenties. Patchett kept reminding me Sabine was in her forties, and I couldn't help but feel sad for her: she married a man who only loved her as a friend and has nothing else after his death but his money and the money of Phan.As pitiful as Sabine was, I still kept hoping to connect with this novel. When Sabine learns Parcifal's mother is in fact alive and well in Nebraska, she welcomes her and Parcifal's sister when they visit Los Angeles. I hoped the preposterousness of this situation would carry humor and grace, but instead, it just seemed sad and somewhat far-fetched all around. Despite these long-held secrets about Parcifal (his family still knows him as Guy), something always felt off about the people; they never felt real either. There were a few digs at Midwestern life I didn't buy either, but I could have overlooked some of the caricature if I felt the emotional depth I have in Patchett's other works.Favorite passage: "Most people can't be magicians for the same reason they can't be criminals. They have guilty souls. Deception doesn't come naturally. They want to be caught."The verdict: Despite my love of Patchett's writing, I never connected with Sabine in this story, and I never felt truly engaged with the narrative. While her writing excelled, plot and character development were lacking, and overall, this novel left me cold.
    • 4/5
      The novel begins shortly after the death of Sabine's husband, Parsifal. He was gay, and his lover, Phan, has also died recently. Parsifal married Sabine so she could inherit from him with less fuss; Sabine probably married Parsifal because she once loved him, and, in the later years of their relationship, considered him her best friend. Parsifal was a magician and Sabine his assistant. When Parsifal's will reveals that he has a mother and two sisters living in Nebraska, about whom he never told Sabine, she begins to discover things about Parisal's past that both clarify and confuse her understanding of who he was.Patchett's writing is wonderful, and she puts her characters and settings (Los Angles and Alliance, Nebraska) on the page with such simple clarity and seemingly effortless attention to detail that you never once question the reality of them. Magic tricks and the world of magicians weave through the story, adding interest and some thematic heft. The secrets in Parsifal's past always work to reveal more about the novel's characters, never exist for drama or shock value. An engaging and compelling read, though one which ends perhaps a bit abruptly, without a fully satisfying resolution to all of the story threads.