The Prestige

Wow. Being one of the many people who saw the movie first, I was immediately surprised at how radically different the book was from its cinematic adaptation. Starting off in the latter years of the 20th Century (already a major difference), the book was an intricately-woven web of mystery, magic, and wonder. It's next to impossible to write an adequate review of the book (or the movie, for that matter) without giving away too much (even a little bit would be too much!), and I'm sure that the other reviews give enough information on their own. This was a very intimate, truly MYSTERIOUS, and dark story. So dark even, that in some ways, it was even darker than the movie (which went for a more obvious - even conventional - angle on the story). I loved it, and movie fan or not, you probably will, too.

This is one of many, many books that only made it onto my radar because there was a movie coming out. If I know that a movie I'm particularly interested in was based on a book, I make every effort to read the book first. I am SO glad that I did. Christopher Priest's haunting mystery story is without question one of the finest novels I've read this year. Andrew Westley, a man adopted at a young age, is summoned for a meeting at the home of a woman he's never met. At the same time, he recieves in the mail a book penned by his biological great-grandfather, a famous stage magician, about his life and the practice of magic. Upon meeting the woman, Kate, Andrew discovers that his ancestor and hers were great rivals on stage, a rivalry that lasted their entire careers, and the feud has continued through their families over the centuries. Reading manuscripts left behind by their predecessors, Andrew and Kate begin to piece together the truth about the feud that drove their families apart and the horrific secrets of the lives their grandfathers led. This is a fantasy novel in many respects, but beyond that, it's a mystery. What's more, is an amazing mystery. The lives of Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier are intertwining riddles, secrets that overlap and comingle in ways even the men themselves don't understand. This, to me, is the best kind of mystery -- the sort where the reveal leaves you stunned but, at the same time, embarassed that you didn't see it coming, because it's so perfectly constructed. The book reads like a magic trick, except at the end the curtain is whisked away and all the secrets are revealed. I'm still anxious to see the movie, but now I find myself nervous that it couldn't quite live up to the novel. This was fantastic.

This was a lot of fun but probably doesn't warrant repeated reading since it's pretty dependent on plot twists and shocks to hold your interest. With most Christopher Priest novels currently out of print (Dream of Wessex, etc) it's nice to see this one still out there and it's one of his better novels too, which is a nice bonus. Basically it concerns two magicians at the turn of the century who's paths cross and through a series of unpleasant events become bitter rivals, screwing up each other's tricks and driving each other to more and more complicated illusions in a magical game of oneupmanship. This tale is told through two journals as read by their descendants, first one magician, than the other. This style works pretty well, there are some quirks and it probably won't fool anyone who is a Victorian scholar but it looks good enough to me and it's not enough to make me hate the books. What he does an excellent job of is getting us into the world of magicians, without turning the book into a tedious expose of how they do their tricks ('cause it's all about the illusion), you get a glimpse into a sort of exclusive club that's all about convincing you that you're seeing what you shouldn't be seeing. The method of using both journals is a trick that required quite a bit of skill to pull off properly, since the order of the journals make a bit of difference in order to remain surprising and it's interesting to see two different versions of events, especially when one explains the other in greater detail (the only problem with that is that by the time you get to the concurrent event in the second journal, you might have forgotten what happened the first time around). Some people might take some issue with the fact that it gets seriously weird toward the end, and being that the book mostly sticks to "real" stuff the way it starts to go toward fantasy might turn off some people . . . you'll have to read and decide that for yourself, unfortunately. Also, I wasn't exactly sure what the point of the bookending modern day descendants was, they barely appear and Priest doesn't make too much of an effort to give them any sort of personality, which leaves the ending a little flatter than maybe it should be. Still, this is a fine novel showing a lot of imagination and skill, and those looking for fantasy without elves and swords should take a sharp detour here. Even with its flaws, it's highly readable and very recommended.

Christopher Priest must be one of the most decorated but unread authors around. In 1983 he was named one of the Best of Young British Novelists. And The Prestige won both the World Fantasy Award and Britain's James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Meanwhile, I'd never heard of him and when the book got some good reviews over here, it was a NY Times notable book, I couldn't find it anywhere. Bur I'm glad I finally got ahold of a copy, because the novel lives up to the hype. Priest tells the story of two turn of the century magicians, Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden, who are first rivals and then bitter enemies as what starts out as an attempt to learn each others secrets deteriorates into obsessive hatred and is even handed down to succeeding generations. Eventually their efforts to top one anothers latest tricks draw Nikola Tesla into the picture. Angier travels to Colorado to see if Tesla's experiments with electricity have any magical implications. They do and the results are predictably, but delightfully, horrifying. It's pretty hard to describe this novel without giving too much of the story away. It's also a story that invites comparison; I saw reviewer references to The Alienist, Robertson Davies, John Fowles, H.G. Wells, etc. Suffice it to say, the writing is terrific, the story is original but harkens back to classic themes and the tension he builds is palpable. My only complaint is that it either ended abruptly or simply before I wanted it to; I'm not sure which. Find it and read it. You won't want it to end either. GRADE: A

Written on the cover of this book is the phrase "Winner of a World Fantasy Award" -- those are the words that first caught my attention. And in retrospect, I find The Prestige entirely deserving of that honor. Few and far between are the books that I pick up and can still remember several years later, but it's been three or more years since I read this one, and certain vibes and moments that I took from it are still with me. This is due, in part, to an average-to-good plotline, but in the end, to Priest's own sleight-of-hand as an author -- he shows an impressive range, a nice attention to detail, and a subdued sense of style which sets the perfect tone for this tale of rival vaudeville magicians in the late 19th century...Set in 1878, and focused on two magicians who are rivals in both business and love, this story is delivered in a style that made it literally impossible to put down (I think I surreptitiously read it during school classes for about two days, non-stop, and might as well have been absent. I don't even know what I missed). Moving from one character's perspective to another, the story unfolds almost entirely through journal entries written by the two protagonists. The intriguing conceit of the novel is that these journals are not discovered until almost a hundred years later, when the descendants of the two rivals meet and feel a mysterious connection to each other. As they slowly uncover the series of mysterious and unnatural events which befell their warring ancestors, the action moves fluidly from past to present to future and back, almost without warning. The drastically different narrative styles used in the two journals reveal that Mr. Priest must have an incredible amount of talent -- they might as well have been written by two different people, so unalike are their tone and perspective. The details of the plot are far too complicated to summarize, but I would go out of my way to recommend this book to fiction lovers. While the story does not leave you with any significant knowledge or insight into the meaning of life, it is pleasure reading at its best, and there is a lot to be said for that.