Quite frankly, I bought this book because it had a rabbit on the front, and I'm an avid rabbit lover. But I ended up loving this book, mainly because I could relate to her grief (I'm a widow, too). And the quirky ending, that makes you wonder, did she and Kitty ever really get together..., was great. I thought all the characters were very human and likable, and you felt compassion for the position that all of them found themselves in, due to what happened so many years ago. Not to mention, as a rabbit lover, the random notations about the rabbit were charming, i.e., on Page 182, when Sabine calls home to her dad in LA, and he says, "Guess who's sitting here in my lap, helping me read the newspaper?" And Sabine says, "You'll spoil him." And her dad's response is, "No such thing as a spoiled bunny. This is an animal who possesses an infinite capacity for affection." Loved it!

Parsifal the Magician is dead, and you're kind of glad anyway because really, who goes by the name Parsifal anyway? Parsifal is just one of many uninteresting characters in a novel that dares you to slap yourself awake to get through uninspiring dream sequence after another. And boy do those dream sequences keep coming. To say this book was unaffecting is to minimize how greatly this novel disappoints.

The book starts off with the loss of Parsifal, the great love of Sabine's life. But you never really get a true feel of the loss of this man's life, he, much like the book's plot, is merely an apparition. He is a ghost on every page of this book and yet again he never truly is there. Sure he's talked about a lot but he never really seems real, and quite frankly you never seem to care that he is gone. He's lived his life, had his fun, and the poor hapless soul that is his assistant is all that's left behind.
Sabine was just a character to me. She never really felt real and it didn't help that the author had her spouting nonsense like "In California every girl you meet you want to kiss" I mean every description of LA was so waxingly poetic it felt like she was reciting lines from a postcard.

Well if you can't tell by now I hated this book. I'm an avid reader and I must say this book was dull, boring, and an utter chore to read through. All I felt was relief when I got to the last page.

I didn't think I was going to enjoy this book -- but in the end it definitely grew on me and ultimately touched me.
It's definitely written in a muted tone. The protagonist, the assistant of the title, is sunk in depression after the death of her two gay friends, one of whom was her husband. She sleeps a lot -- but she has sleepwalked through most of her life, settling for the illusion of love instead of the real thing. Her role as the assistant has been to stand there and smile sweetly while he does all the real living and loving.
Surprisingly, only when she travels to snow-bound Nebraska to bond with her dead husband's famly does the book come truly to life. It becomes clear this is a book about family and about the possibility of love -- the love that holds families together and the love that binds two people together, true love, the real thing, not the illusion.
Worth persisting with.

I have really become an admirer of Patchett's writing, and this book was a close second to Bel Canto, which I adored. The Magician's Assistant is Sabine, and she is mourning the sudden loss of her husband, Parsifal. But the story goes deeper than that. Parsifal is gay, and shortly after the death of his lover, Phan, he marries Sabine to ensure her security in the event of his death. Sabine had been Parsifal's long-time assistant in his magic act, but more importantly, they shared a bond of friendship that was unbreakable. When Parsifal's lawyer notifies Sabine that he had a family (who he claimed were dead) and that his name is really Guy Fetters, Sabine's world gets turned on its head. Suddenly, the man she though she knew most in the world is a stranger to her, and she wants to learn everything about his past that he has kept from her. So the Fetter family enters Sabine's life, and the book follows the development of these new relationships seamlessly.

There is a hint of magic in Patchett's writing, and not just the tricks and illusions she recalls in The Magician's Assistant. She writes relationships and dialogue in a manner that seems effortless. Her characters are entirely human - flawed and lovable. This was a great read and a touch of magic amongst the ordinary.

There are such a lot of excellent reviews of this excellent book here that I feel intimidated and will concentrate on the minor characters. There are sharp observations about neuroradiologists and rabbits. It's unusual to see much of the psychology of the domestic rabbit in fiction. The ones in "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" are living a domestic life in a way but Peter's behavior in Mr. McGregor's garden is that of a typical wild rabbit. The rabbits in "Watership Down" only encounter humans as remote and threatening. The White Rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland" never seems to me to behave in an authentically rabbit-like way. Parsifal's rabbit is a Flemish Giant, which must be a handful for a magician. Dutch Dwarfs are more common in that context, although they have a reputation for being bad-tempered. I'd never heard of a white Flemish Giant. They're not popular as pets because of their size and (stop if this will upset you) were bred for meat. Neuroradiologists can also be house-trained.

I did not care about these characters at all. I did not feel any sympathy for the woman who was in love with a man who could not love her back in a passionate and romantic way. It seemed so strange to me that a woman could be so obsessed with a man that she would actually marry him and live with him and his lover for years. The story jumped all over the place between dreams and reality.No one should be ashamed of theiri sexuality and hide it. I got the impression that was what the characters in this book did.I can understand maybe not being truthful to society but if you are not true to yourself what kind of satisfaction can you get from your life? I think it would be naive to think anyone could and this book proves it. If this is someone's idea of reality they have wasted their life.

Love comes in many forms and from many directions - just one of the many lessons to be learned from Ann Patchett's wonderful novel The Magician's Assistant. As we mourn with Sabine, the assistant for whom the book was named, who has lost her magician husband who never really was her husband, we also learn to rejoice with her for all the love in her life that comes from the most unsuspecting places: the man her husband, Parsifal, loved; the family Parsifal left behind and pronounced dead; even the rabbit who shared the spotlight in their magic act. As Sabine unravels the truth about Parsifal's past, she heals her own wounds of loss as well as the scars left on others using the magic of slight of hand and an open and loving heart.

Were I sitting beside Ann Patchett when she wrote the conclusion to her novel, I would have urged her to draw out the ending a bit more and give us a better glimpse of things to come for Sabine. On the other hand, Patchett's ending allows each of us to project our own hopes, dreams and fears into Sabine's future.

The true magic of The Magician's Assistant is that it enabled me to see in my own life a dimension that I have left unobserved and to realize that we all have the ability to pull rabbits of one form or another out of a variety of hats.

It's always thrilling to find an author who resonates with your soul. Ann Patchett does just that and I can't wait to curl up with a stack of her novels and meet her characters and hopefully learn more about her, them and me.

It took awhile for me to get through this book. The writing was okay, but it was not one of those "I can't put this book down" type. I hated the ending. It left me empty. I expected a lot more. What happened with the plot? I felt like the storyline was all over the place and not centered. It just seemed to jump all over the place. It's like trying to put a puzzle together and you find that you have lost one or two pieces of it to make it complete. Very disappointing indeed.

Gain insight into the grieving process and how it affects those who are grieving and those around them.

I love Patchett's writing style. Unfortunately, it carried me through this story that otherwise I would have long abandoned. The L.A. characters - Sabine and Parsifal and Phan - were all relentlessly perfect. The plot was dull. The ending was absurd. The Nebraska characters were a little more interesting, but with no plot for context, that didn't help much.

The Magician's Assistant is one of the finest books I've ever read. I've read it twice and I've bought copies of the novel as gifts for family and friends. I've read three of Ms. Patchett's fiction novels and one non-fiction novel. It never fails to amaze me how quickly I get to know her characters...it's almost an intimate relationship. By the time I'm through reading each novel (and I try to read them slowly), I'm sad. It's as if I'm parting with a dear friend.

Ann Patchett writes the way writer's dream about being able to write. With "Bel Canto," she saw her career take off, but it's here, with "The Magician's Assistant ," that we see her true ability to convey emotions using such simple language. She truly is one of the great voices of our generation.

The story starts (and according to our narrator) ends with the death of Parsifal, a gay magician whose assistant, Sabine, is the protagonist of the story. What unfolds is her discovery that the Parsifal she knew was a reinvented person who was originally named Guy and lived in Nebraska, a far cry from his lavish lifestyle in L.A. as a magician who had been featured on the Tonight Show and a successful rug merchant. We learn all about what casues him to run away from home and we are provided with insights into what life is like for those individuals who dazzle us with pulling rabbits out of a hat or levitating different people before our very eyes.

The emotional core of the store revolves around Sabine's mourning intersecting with Guy's family who have not seen him for over 18 years. What Patchett expertly does is portray the way grief affects all of us. I really could go on and on about how wonderful a book this is, but it's the kind of thing you have to experience for yourself.

This is a must read.

The Magician's Assistant was going to be one of my top reads and I fully intended to recommend it to friends. I enjoyed Patchett's writing style and thought the concept behind the book was fairly creative. The characters were developed and I thought I knew each character pretty well. I also thought I knew how the book would end--Sabine would rescue Kitty and her sons and bring them out to Los Angeles. She would help them based on how much Kitty reminded Sabine of her husband and how happy Parsifal would have been to help Kitty start anew. Then, out of nowhere, Sabine suddenly realized that she was attracted to Kitty physically, and it was then, that she discovered she was a lesbian. No reference had been made to her previous feelings for women, only a mention about dating an architect who treated her well but whom she could not love. When I read those sentences, I imagined that she did not like the architect because he was not "the one." But to make the leap from that, to the final 50 pages, was plain unbelievable. I had thought the book would be about discovering a loved one's secret past, forgiving the person for not sharing that side of his life with you, and realizing that your life was still valuable after he left. Instead I was now being told that the book was supposed to be about Sabine's discovery of her lesbian self. If this had been foreshadowed and written into her character earlier, perhaps it might have made sense. But to leave this til the end was a disservice to the novel and the characters we had loved so much.

Ann Patchett, author of the astounding "Bel Canto," writes novels that are remarkably different in time, place, character, and voice. Three things, however, remain consistent in each one. Each concerns the collision of people from different cultures or social classes, each is concerned with love and loss and the transcendent strength of the human spirit, and each is superbly wriiten. "The Magician's Assistant" is no exception. When Parsifal the Magician dies in Southern California, his assistant of 20 years and wife of 1 year finds that his life held secrets that she could never have imagined. From the affluence and urbanity of her home in Los Angeles, she finds herself in rural Nebraska in mid-winter, living with a family struggling individually and together to make sense of the past and decisions about their future. Patchett's respect for the complexities and nuance that lie within every soul, no matter how imperfect, comes through in every page. A remarkable book from a remarkable writer.

--I was not a fan of Bel Canto, but I was directed into giving Ann Patchett another chance. I am so pleased that I picked up Magician's Assistant!
The book opens with the sad death of Parsifal, the great magician,then the story turns to focus on his wife, and assistant, Sabine. Sabine struggles with grief, secrets, discoveries and realization of her own worth.
You will become wrapped up in Sabine's life and struggle to understand her grief and her newest journey!
--I do not want to spoil the book, but inbetween the loss, the secrets, there lies a world to behold, a world to get lost in. You will not want to put it down!

This book is nearly all pleasure. Its emotionally engaging enough to compel attention, but its also light enough to pick up and put down easily. There is a distinctly likeable graciousness about the characters - the star is kind, beautiful, talented and bright and her supporting cast members are loyal and perceptive. The few mean-spirited characters are dismissed quickly, and never really cloud the picture.

Occasionally, I pick up a book and wonder how on earth they made a movie out of it; this book is the exact opposite. The book is so concrete, the characters so flattering, the dialogue so clear that I could practically see the credits rolling by when I closed the cover.

"The Magician's Assistant" surprised me in a number of ways. This is not the genre of book I usually read, as I lean toward suspense and comic romance as a general rule. But when I read the first page, I turned to the second, and then I kept going, not really mindful of why, but simply caught up in an unusual story and seamless writing. Usually easily bored, I never was with this book.
The second surprise was that the story, as odd as it was, lingers in my thoughts, continuing to bring up questions as it -- if you'll forgive the clichéd term -- resonates. That the ending does not sum up the story "satisfactorily," as some reviewers have written, actually works for me because I was left to draw my own conclusions, which makes me think about it more. As with the rest of the story, there is so much nuance in the ending that it causes examination of one's own judgments about love, sexuality, familial ties, etc.
Another surprise, but also a possible weakness for me, was that I didn't really relate to any of the characters, particularly not Sabine, the protagonist. Nothing that she did lined up with anything I might do (except maybe find deep affection for a rabbit). But this is surprising in that the book kept me involved and interested without me feeling that I could identify with anyone in it. Maybe this is the gift of good writing, however, that the reader can view the lives of others with interest and empathy without any personal knowledge of what it is like to be in their skin.

While I enjoyed Bel Canto, I much preferred the Magician's Assistant. Although it moved slowly, I savored every word and did not want to put it down. I was not troubled by the unrealistic nature of some of the plot line, because I felt that the character development and inner plot line was so completely right and on target. I read this book as more allegory than representation; I felt it to be a magical tale, which was in keeping with the story's characters. I do not read fantasy literature as a rule, but I would if it were more like this book, subtle and understated. Ann Patchett takes very real emotional states and captures the unreality and the magic in the experiencing of them. A truly beautiful book.

"The Magician's Assistant" was one of those books that surprised me. I checked it out randomly from the library, with no expectations, and found myself completely engaged by the second chapter. The author delves into the grieving process Sabine goes through as she tries to make sense out of her life and her relationship with her gay husband, the magician Parcifal. A secondary character, Parcifal's lover and Sabine's friend Phan, comes to life in dream sequences to show Sabine the way she can weave her memories together with new information she receives as she gets to know Parcifal's family. The novel really challenged the themes of love, comfort and safety for me. SPOILER: The last chapter or so seems to want to wrap things up quickly, as other reviews note, and I do not fully agree with Patchett's treatment of Sabine's relationship with Kitty. Perhaps this is contrary to the author's intention, but I prefer to see Sabine as wanting to be close to Kitty as a way to recapture her closeness with Parcifal. I don't see this as a lesbian "awakening" but rather a quest for the comfort and acceptance she felt with Parcifal, Phan and Rabbit in their unorthodox family.

I look forward to reading more by Ann Patchett.

the book was in prime condition. I am enjoying it very much. Mailing was prompt and well wrapped. BB.

A lot of beautiful writing...but there was no resolution! I don't absolutely believe that the ending of a book has to set things out in black and white, but there has to at least be a good indication of where the character's going to go for a book to be satisfying, and there isn't that here. SPOILER -- What, so the idea here is that Sabine has realized she's a lesbian? Or not? We don't really know, and that's one thing that makes this book unsatisfying.

I enjoyed the book until about three-quarters of the way through, up until around the point it became clear there wasn't going to be any grand enlightenment. As another reviewer said, most of the secrets are revealed by the first half of the book. That's all right, if somehow there's an epiphany afterward, or the character grows. But that didn't really happen here.

Nice writing, interesting characters. But this book needed a final spark of energy that wasn't, in the end, there. What's the meaning of all the dreams with her husband's lover, Phan? A few would have been fine; as it was, there's a few too many.

I've read most of Ann's books now. "Bel Canto" is by far the best. There's a definite progression and improvement with her writing, so I'm looking forward to the next one.

This book is beautiful. It shows that true love can exist in any form. The characters are wonderful and rememberable. It is a love story that anyone can enjoy. It is a must read.

I loved, loved Bel Canto and so was expecting great things from Ann's prior book. However, I was disappointed. The plot was a little too contrived and unbelieveable, and I didn't find it inspirational at all, like Bel Canto could be. Just depressing.

This is another one of those books where everything and everyone is either black or white. LA and the three main characters are all flawless. Nebraska is a wasteland populated by ignorant brutes.
Come on Ann give us a little credit. Life isn't like that.

I am amazed at the 'average 4-star rating' listed for this book. It is flat out the best book of loss ever. I send this book to anyone who has lost a loved one. It is on my Desert Island book list, for sure; and I am a two-book-a-week fiction junkie. Bittersweet, haunting, hopeful, uplifting, funny.....the full package.

The Sweetness of Intimacy Lost: A Book Review of The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett, Harcourt Brace & Company, paperback p. 356.

This tale opens as Parsifal, the magician, dies. We are told of his previous day of an intense headache, and the short, claustrophobic stay in the MRI chamber. Parsifal's death by stroke was unexpected; he was preparing for an impending death due to AIDS-related complications, as did his love Phan, six months prior. At his death, he is accompanied by his wife, Sabine, his Magician's Assistant of 22 years and his wife of 6 months. Parsifal married her so that she would be taken care of following his death. Thus we enter an intriguing, unusual love story.

The shock of the death doesn't seem to dissipate throughout the book. The impact is compounded by Parsifal's previous life which comes to light upon his death. He had lied about his past.

This was a lovely story which unfolded beautifully, and is best unrecounted here; a gradual, descent into love lost and all the intimacy which goes with it awaits you, the reader.

Excellent use of dream sequences are skillfully used to bring Sabine to a place of resolution with Phan's life and death as well as her best friend and beloved Parsifal's death. Both Phan and Parsifal visit Sabine in her dream state; they are the beloved, the guides, the friends, the family, and they lend a voice of sanity to the situation she enters in Nebraska.

We go back in time to the 1960's, childhood, move forward to LA 1990's settings including an appearance on the Johnny Carson show, which is replayed nightly, in the home of Parsifal's family of origin, in Nebraska. The 1990's also hold memories of magical performances, the parties, the gay and glamorous LA life, the marriage party, the selection of the burial triad plot for Phan, Parsifal and Sabine, the anchoring goodness of Sabine's mother and father and pet Rabbit. All lend humanness to this bittersweet tale of unconventional love, remorse, forgiveness and letting go. The resulting relationship Sabine develops with Parsifal's family, is believable, with bouts confusion interspersed with bursts of clarity and well-written dialogue. " I don't care how you worked out being married. What I care about is that you knew him, you were there with him. You were with him all those years when I wasn't. You were with him when he died." Kitty stopped and considered this. "Were you?" she said, "right there with him?"

The ending stays true to form, leaving the reader with the sense of life might go on, or might just slide back. It leaves the hopeful room to hope and room for the despairing to despair..

Patchett is an exceptional writer but possessive of a flaw that more and more authors have. Bad endings. Advertisers will tell you that just when an advertising agency and client have grown tired of an ad and pull it from the air is when readers and viewers are getting accustomed to it and picking up its message. An author who takes two years to write a book may grow tired of his or her characters but the reader who reads the book in a week may not have. The author wants to wrap things up neatly and quickly at about page 350. The reader wants a more complex ending. Great books have both great stories and great endings. I loved The Magician's Assistant but, sadly because of its ending, must rate it only good.

I LOVED "Bel Canto" and had high hopes for this book. As I began, I thought the characters were lovingly drawn and that the only reason the book felt a little flat was because we're seeing everything through Sabine's numb and grief stricken eyes.

Yet as the book continues, that flat, superficial feeling never really goes away. We learn that the love of Sabine's life, Parsifal, could do no wrong even though he lied to Sabine about his past and did other horrible, though understandable things. We learn that Nebraska and snow are the definition of hell on earth and that Los Angeles and those who live there are perfect - their only flaws being insignificant ones.

We learn that Sabine is one of the most clueless people on Earth, even after having travelled the world, having met hundreds of people, and after having lived 44 years in an international city like LA. I so started to doubt what I was experiencing through her that when she has her big emotional "breakthrough" - I didn't believe it.

The ending is another of those "I guess I've written enough pages so I'll stop here" endings. Sigh.

Patchett's writing is lyrical and so wonderful to read - I just feel that this book wasn't fleshed out enough. There just wasn't enough of a story or an ending to put it in the same league as "Bel Canto".

I guess I'll just wait for her next book.

I was drawn in by the characters and their relationships. I think the author told the story well, but then the plot took a couple strange turns, and not necessarily what I think were for the best. The ending was abrupt and a letdown. Did the author have a deadline to meet and rushed the ending? That's what it seems like.

This book moved me so deeply. Ann Patchett is a true artist. She intertwines realistic journeys into grief, dream sequences, touching human interaction, and flashbacks to craft a magnificent story. One of the best, most beautiful books I have ever read!

After loving Ann Patchett's wonderful novel, 'Bel Canto,' so much, I decided to read her other novels, in the order in which they'd been written. While not on the same level of writing as 'Bel Canto,' I liked her first novel, 'The Patron Saint of Liars' very much. Her second novel, 'Taft,' was a real letdown, but I figured this was just a glitch and that surely her third novel would be even better than her first, or at least as good. So I was really disappointed to find that though a readable book, it was what I'd call ordinary writing, with characters that didn't get under my skin (the way they did in her first and fourth novels), and with very little complexity and little to think or ponder about.

It's true that after I finished the book, I tried every which way to look at it symbolically, to see how the magic tricks, the sleight of hand and the distraction of attention could be applied to what happens, especially with the ending. And yes, OK, I had some theories, such as maybe Sabine had been so distracted by her 22 years with the glamorous, gay Parsifal that she had failed to realize that she was really gay herself, and thus her attraction to Kitty at the end.

But I found that I just didn't really care, partly because I didn't care that much about the main characters. I found the trio of Sabine, Parsifal and Phan all too good, too unflawed, too beautiful, and Sabine's worship of Parsifal for over 2 decades a little hard to fathom, as is her relationship with him for that long. I had a similar relationship with a gay man for several years, but it certainly wasn't without terrible heartache nor without disagreements (which Parsifal and Sabine seem to never have had, not a one!). Well, everything in L.A. is good and charming and wonderful, including Sabine's parents and L.A. itself. And no, you don't really get much sense of Nebraska, as Sabine rarely leaves her new family's house and the Fetters' family seems somewhat cliched.

I did like reading about a magician's life, having known little about this before, and I did like the way Patchett used dreams in this novel to advance the story or add information that would have been hard to introduce otherwise. They weren't your usual dreams, but more like dialogues with the dead--well, mainly Sabine and Phan, leading up to Parsifal's appearance at the end. I did think a bit about the title of the book in relationship to Sabine and what she was doing there in Nebraska all that time (because I surely did wonder as the book progressed!). But I didn't see a lot of growth in her. And the various conversations with the Fetters' family, while written well enough (but never lyrical writing!), didn't seem to really take me anywhere. Nor did the ending.

What Patchett seemed to be saying about love and family has been said many times before and she didn't do it in this novel, for me anyway, in a way that was unique, nor in a story that I could really get involved with. Sorry, but it seemed simplistic & maybe a bit New Agey to me. Maybe some readers would find it entertaining, but I felt I'd pretty much wasted my time in reading it (though I've now accomplished my goal of reading all of Patchett's books!).Thus I'd highly recommend that you skip this novel and Patchett's 2nd ('Taft'), and read her first and last ones instead.

I loved this book up until the last 50 pages. I thought the characters and relationships were beautiful. But, I was shocked by the end of the story. The characters that had been so exceptionally described throughout the book fell apart for me at the end. The book I could not put down, I would not recommend to anyone. Very disappointing!

I could not put down the Magician's Assistant. It follows the grief process of the main character, who is very easy to relate to and hard not to love. The story is artfully constructed of current happenings, the main character's thoughts and emotional process, flashbacks and wonderings about past events, and even dream sequences. I can't wait to read more by Ann Patchett. I think this book is absolutely brilliant!

i enjoyed this novel for about 2/3 of it length. the writing was wonderful and, unlike some reviewers, i could accept the living arrangement.

what finally forced me to put down the book, after skipping over most of the last third to discover, yes, i had indeed predicted the outcome, was the emotional limits, superficiality and immaturity of the concept. perhaps if i had been fifteen, or even ten, years younger when reading this i would have been more impressed. i didn't expect shakespeare, but, for deeper understanding of people i can name at least three writers primarily known for their mysteries.

the prose is wonderful. the plotting is good. the novel is worth at least a try.

A wonderful, transporting tale of love and forgiveness. One of my favourites of all time.