Now you see it… now you still see it
Mythmaker Daniel Wallace—of Big Fish notoriety—serves up his strangest brew yet with this folksy, hyper-told novel. It is narrated, patch-quilt style, from numerous second- and third-hand accounts, primarily from circus friends closest to central figure Henry Walker.
Walker is a world-renowned prestidigitator who in recent years has lost his craft and now is missing himself, having fallen victim to a hate crime in 1954 Alabama. The surprising consequence of the narrators’ bias for Henry is that they ironically prove the least qualified to narrate—they are most unaware of the Negro Magician’s actual identity and mysterious past, involving a series of family tragedies and a Faustian pact with the devil (a fresh take more resembling bluesman Robert Johnson than either version, whether Marlowe or Goethe).
The unraveling of a man’s myth to illuminate the essence of his life is the charm of this accomplished and inventive novel.