Evidently I can be charmed.

Over the course of a couple of nights last week, I read Daniel Wallace's novel Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician. I'm not quite sure why I got the book from the library, except that I recognized Wallace's name (he is the author of the novel Big Fish, which was made into a movie starring Ewan McGregor. I never read that book, but I rather enjoyed the movie, although how much of that is attributable to Ewan and how much to Wallace's story, I couldn't tell you). I also thought the title was kind of interesting, and might even be one that might appeal to Mr. CR.

The question that opens the book is, where is Henry Walker, the Negro Magician (the book is set in the 1950s, hence the corresponding vocabulary)? And the rest of the book is the stories of different friends (although not all of them are friendly) who each try to tell what they know of Henry Walker, who had been working with Jeremiah Mosgrove's Chinese Circus before he disappeared. Their stories are, of course, true in that they are faithfully repeating what they were told by Henry and what they thought they knew. But taken all together? How true are the stories? What do they mean?

I really enjoyed this book. I was actually charmed, and that doesn't happen often (although it has a better chance of happening when the book is around 250 pages long, which this one is). In the end it hammers home rather elegantly this question: How well do we really ever know other people? I love that question. On the first page of the novel, which is a letter (and which you should re-read after finishing the book), one of the characters says: "I think it's better to know what we can about people, to see beneath their skin, especially when it's about our own family--sometimes the most mysterious people we know."

I love that. I love being reminded that people are mysteries. I love books that remind me of it.

Comments

[Eva]

I read this a couple of months ago, and I loved it too! :)

[Citizen Reader]

Eva:
Yeah, it was kind of a surprise, wasn't it? I didn't expect to like it, then did, then got a little tired of it for a couple chapters, then ended up loving it. A roller coaster of a read, to be sure, but a fun one at that.

[pop tart]

I loved Big Fish (the movie) and thought it had some similar themes. The main character has always told stories about his life and his son is exasperated by them and with his father dying wishes he could just be honest/genuine. But are they just big fish tales? Or the stories the Ewan MacGregor (later Albert Finney) knows that define his life. What is true and what isn't in our lives and how true are the stories that we use to define our own history.

I'll have to give this new a book a try. Thanks for the rec

[Citizen Reader]

Pop Tart!
I liked "Big Fish" (the movie) too, although I meant then to read the book and never got around to it. (I made time for the movie, as it starred one Mr. Ewan McGregor.) There was something charming about that movie, and Wallace's story, too. Usually I find when things are "charming," that's code for "hokey," but I think he does a nice job of telling rather gentle stories that don't always include gentle events.

The question of the stories we tell to define our lives is always an interesting one; I think you're right about that too.

[Venta]

Thanks for the recommendation, CR! I just finished the book today. Now I have to go back and reread the opening letter.

Now what to read???