The Magician's Assistant

In The Magician’s Assistant, Patchett uses magic to investigate the ways in which people deceive themselves and others, and to highlight the beauty of the human experience. This novel is full of magical moments, such as when Dot views the adult version of her long-lost son on the television and says, “You can’t imagine what that’s like, thinking your child is probably having some miserable life somewhere because of what you’ve done to him and then seeing him on television, a big famous magician” (77). In this sense, the motif of magic operates as a hopeful tone, implying that life itself can be just as exciting and unexpected as the magic performed onstage.

The novel also features several allusions to eras in Parsifal’s life that Sabine regards as magically happy. Because the novel begins with Parsifal’s death, Sabine spends much of the novel reflecting on her past experiences with him. In this context, the happy decades she spent with him become magical and are celebrated through Patchett’s use of a bittersweet tone. The narrative describes this past era as “a completely different lifetime, one without sickness, without knowledge of past or future. It was just Parsifal, Sabine, and Rabbit. Fun” (99). This wistful recollection highlights both the positive moments of Sabine’s marriage and the deeply tumultuous grieving process that she is currently going through, for she focuses on the magical times in her life to maintain a healthy perspective on her recent misfortunes.

Despite these positive connotations, Patchett also uses magic as a metaphor for deception. For example, Sabine cannot be a magician because “[m]agic was less about surprise than it was about control” (190), and having power over someone else is not aligned with her values. Significantly, the relationship between magician and audience is based on these very dynamics of power, for the magician has knowledge of the deception, and the audience desires to be deceived. As the narrative states, “[T]hat was the point of magic, to take people in, make them forget what was real and possible” (100). Thus, Patchett uses the motif of magic to highlight humanity’s proclivity for deception—both to deceive and to be deceived.