The Last Magician

Janette Turner Hospital

I am currently devouring Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician, or perhaps it is consuming me. I am sure some of you have already read this little gem, but it is like me to be behind the times. I haven't finished it yet, but I am racing to the finish line. A couple of things have impressed me about this book. The narrator tells you that time is not linear and the plot follows along with this assertion magnificently. The narrator bounces back and forth between past, present to future while centering attention on the lives of the characters she is describing. She also interweaving her own life story into the plot in the most clever ways. At any event, the seemingly erratic timeline never leaves the reader wondering and confused.

The story invokes images of Dante's Inferno, Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gaiman's Neverwhere, Tartt's The Secret History, and one of the novelettes by Stephen King (the title of which is not coming to me at the moment; the one about the high school teacher and the three boys who come back from the dead to terrorize him). Now, Suzz, before you get all aghast at The Secret History reference, let me tell you that it is only a "deja vu" connection and not an actual plot similarity. Nor is this a horror novel.

The narrator, Lucy/Lucia also describes much that is derived from deeply buried memories of the other characters and her own attributions of what lurks within their minds and rather tortured souls. Sometimes this is done so believably that you cannot help but be suitably impressed. Lucy mainly speaks for Charlie, a talented photographer whose work takes the form of mosaic photographs, or pictures doctored up in rather interesting and meaningful ways using other photos, newsprint, etc. With almost every thought she describes for this character, she relates the existence of the photograph to support her forays into the thoughts of those around her. It is done brilliantly and my description of the technique doesn't do it justice.

The last thing, at this point, that I find remarkable is the extremely visual nature of this work. It attracts and tempts, and repels and disgusts all of the reader's senses. No apology is made, nor should it be. The effect is much like those halloween tricks they would play at parties. Remember when you would be blindfolded and then moved along a row of tables, and your hand would be dunked into a bowl of cold, cooked pasta or raw, slippery liver. The technique here is very much like that. The events are no more real to the reader, than that liver was anything but, well, liver, and yet the reader experiences the reality of what is and has happened to the characters in this book. But again, I am not doing the the author justice. The overall effect of the novel is too wonderfully surreal, and beautiful in its baring of the human soul, to be likened to raw liver slipping through my fingers. And yet, that is the way it feels. Odd. Recommended (even if I haven't finished it yet!).