000			01522nam a2200157 4500
020			_a9781857028157
024			_a44483738
050			_aPS3566.A7756
082			_a813.54
100	1		_aAnn Patchett
245	1		_aThe Magician's Assistant
260			_bFourth Estate Ltd
300			_a368 pages
520			_aThird - and breakthrough - novel by an acclaimed American writer with an enchanting, quirky voice. 'The Magician's Assistant' is at once a love story and a brilliant portrayal of reinvention about a magician who dies leaving his assistant/wife to discover he has lied about his past. A magician (with one memorable appearance on the Johnny Carson Show to his credit) takes the name Parsifal. He is gay. He has a Vietnamese lover, Phan. When Phan dies of AIDS, Parsifal marries the woman who has always adored him and who has lived with them both, his assistant Sabine. Then Parsifal himself dies in California, suddenly and shockingly, of an aneurysm. Parsifal always said that he had no living family and that he came from wealthy upscale Connecticut stock. The reality is very different, as Sabine learns from his lawyer. He came from a poor Nebraska family and they are very much alive. Indeed his mother and sister are on their way to California to meet Sabine, the daughter- and sister-in-law they know nothing about. It is bad that her husband has died. What Sabine must now cope with is coming to terms with his horrific past and the reason he divorced himself from his family and roots.
999			_c19236 _d19236