Jack CBR5 #15, The Magician's Assistant, Anne Patchett

Much has been written exploring the theme that you can't ever know another person completely. Whether it be a result of secrets, misunderstanding, intentional subterfuge,  everyone keeps something back, some part of themselves. Often times, when people die, the parts of themselves we don't know come crashing down around us. This too, is pretty well-mined territory in terms of literary themes.

The Magician's Assistance begins when Parsifal, the magician, dies. Sabine, his assistant and wife, has been with him for 22 years. She knows everything about him....except she doesn't. When his will is read, Sabine learns that her oldest friend, partner, and husband has a family he lied about. They live in Nebraska, and they miss him. They have missed him for a very long time.

Spoiler?

I don't think it's much of a spoiler, it comes out pretty early: Parsifal is gay. Not only that, he is in love with Phan. Sabine is their companion, and until Phan succumbs to AIDS, she is a bit of an outlier. A woman in love with a man who not only loves men, but one in particular. It's after Phan's death that Parsifal tells Sabine, "I want to make you my widow," and so the story begins. It's not Patchett's best storytelling ever, but with Patchett it doesn't ever have to be.  Sabine finds out there is a family about which she did not know, and when they ask to spend time with her, she acquiesces. The events that follow aren't unexpected.

The beauty of this novel is that it is a meditation on loneliness. I read a novel not to long ago where sadness was a drug and it came in a hundred different types: just lost my dog sad, my Dad just died sad, I just remembered what I can never have again sad. etc. etc.  This book is an exploration of loneliness in every single character. Is it lonelier to love someone who can't love you back? Or to lose the one you love because you don't know any better? Or to suffer through life with someone you don't love because you said you would? Is a mother without her child lonelier than an adult without his or her lover? Or is it harder to be the child of parents who adore each other when you've never developed that kind of attachment yourself? There are a hundred examinations of loneliness in this novel, and every one of them is compelling. And somehow Patchett makes you feel everyone one of them, even if that particular loneliness has not been one of yours.

This makes it sound like it is a wholly depressing book. It's not. However, the best moments are in the loneliness. Not only are they the best written, but they make the moments of connection, which might otherwise feel pedestrian, so much more palpable. That said, there are a few moments you wish weren't there, but they are more than made up for in the long run.