The Last Magician: A Novel - Softcover

Hospital, Janette Turner

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039332527X ISBN 13: 9780393325270

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003

Synopsis

"A story of high tension and terrifying allure....Her writing has perfect pitch."―Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

The Last Magician is about power and betrayal, sexual obsession and social ostracism. At its center is Lucy, a good girl and a whore, whose nights are spent in a kaleidoscope of identities as she dons the masks her customers demand. Charlie is a photographer, filmmaker, voyeur, and the last magician―monitoring Lucy, piecing together the splinters of evidence surrounding the death of a child and a murder that happened half a lifetime ago. A New York Times Notable Book. Reading group guide included.

About this title

About the Author:

Janette Turner Hospital received Australia's Patrick White Award for lifetime literary achievement, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this mesmerizing study of the effects of a dark secret on the people who must live with it, the author of Charades proves herself a magician with words and narrative structure. Moreover, she seems to have an artificer's skill for re-creating her fictional approach each time out: each of her novels is different from the others in theme, tone and method. The constants are her impeccable, sensuous prose and her fiercely intelligent imagination. Set in the rain forest near Brisbane and in the city of Sydney, in Hospital's native Australia, the narrative slowly unwinds in elliptical scenes and oblique references, like photos in which the subject is blurred but discernible, and will gradually come into focus. The "last magician" is Charlie Chang, a photographer and filmmaker who devotes himself to unraveling the puzzle at the heart of this tale. Twenty-five years ago, he was one of four children who witnessed the death of a fifth. One of them caused the event; blandly amoral, narcissistic and seemingly without guilt, Robinson Gray is now a famous judge, "Australia's golden boy." Charlie and the others--one woman named Catherine and another named Cat--remain emotionally maimed. The judge's son and the woman who loves him become catalysts in reopening the drama and are sucked into the whirlpool of evil it again sets in motion. Hospital enriches her story with allusions ranging from Virgil and Dante to James Joyce and Christina Stead. She offers crackling social commentary as she contrasts the lives of the homeless squatters (who live underneath Sydney's streets in a warren of caverns and tunnels called "the quarry") with the cream of Sydney's society folk. Her characters' observations about truth and illusion, about memory and precognition and the nature of moral responsibility, are provocative and insightful. Most important, this novel is an example of the storyteller's magical art. 25,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.) .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 039332527X
• ISBN 13: 9780393325270
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320