Ann Patchett's THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT Continued

I finished The Magician’s Assistant – another notch on my Ann Patchett belt. I finished reading and writing about it long ago, in fact – as you can see, there’s a gap in my postings. Somehow summer did not turn out to be a time when I had much time to myself, alas! Boys home from school, needing Camp Mommy to keep them busy. I still stayed up late and didn’t sleep enough so I could get my reading in, but fell behind on posting. I try to rectify that and catch up with the books I read over the summer.

I enjoyed The Magician’s Assistant very much. Her books just flow by and I love her storytelling abilities. That, said, here are some details:

Things I like about Ann Patchett and The Magician’s Assistant:

The skillful way she goes off on seamless tangents and then weaves right back into the narrative.

The way she understands and describes the emotional lives of her characters.

When she describes to a “T” the way I feel about something or something from my own experience (see examples below).

Things I don’t like about Ann Patchett and The Magician’s Assistant:

Well, I’m just not so sure about the ending. I seem to have had the same problem with Bel Canto. In my opinion, Patchett tells these stories that are so good they could just go on and on forever. Maybe she just doesn’t know how to wrap up? Maybe she sees that she’s gone on long enough and the end must come and she starts looking around for ends to tie up? No, I highly doubt that. It’s just in these two books (Magician and Bel Canto) she seems to make last minute romantic connections between two characters and in both books I personally don’t feel that those connections would naturally have been made by the characters as I have come to know and understand them. In this instance, the connection even involves a change of sexual orientation. Not to say it couldn’t happen, and maybe that was her goal all along, but to me it’s the one part of the story that doesn’t feel smooth.

Things Ann Patchett clearly likes that are recurring themes:

Opera

Beautiful homes (In Jungian psychology, the house is a symbol of the self, so I think the literary houses Patchett builds are important.)
(posted 9/29 - written 6/19)