Glen David Gold

Another reread from over a decade ago. It was messy and meandering and glorious, just like a magic show. It was over-stimulating with plots that seem to go nowhere (and some of them don't) but it didn't matter, because sometimes big moonless nightskies can be as nice as (and necessary for!) spectacular fireworks.

At times the story read like a movie script, albeit one that would be difficult to adapt. I liked how the book took full advantage of the textual advantage in depicting magic show more ✨illusions✨. What a low-cost feast for the imagination and so much to imagine too!

Aside: (1) This came out around the same time as Kavalier and Clay, and it's a shame that this one is not as popular. It's definitely more sprawling and fun, perhaps more befitting of a historical fiction on magic. (2) The author was married to the Lovely Bones author! The early 2000s must have been a heady time for them. show less

This is a wonderful blending of fact and fiction, focusing on Charles Carter, a magician in the early part of the 20th Century. The inspiration for Gold's story, aka the jumping off point, is the somewhat suspicious death of President Warren G. Harding. From that moment of historical significance, Gold weaves an amazing tale full of wonder, as well as perseverance, grief, and hope. It also makes clear that a magic trick is not the same as an illusion, while continually reminding the reader show more of the importance of misdirection.

Because Harding, in the book, attended Carter's show shortly before he died, participating in the mysterious final act of illusion, a determined Secret Service agent becomes convinced Carter is somehow involved in the president's death, a plot thread that gives the story most of its tension. A digression to Carter's childhood and early career, leading up to Harding's death and beyond, gives the story its soul. Carter quickly became one of my favorite characters, someone I couldn't help but root for, with his almost childlike sense of joy and confidence that things will work out.

I'd barely read the first hundred pages before turning to the "Program Notes" at the back, then Googling new characters as they appeared so I could know which characters were based on actual people. And as a Marx Brothers fan, I got a thrill when, during the time Carter worked on a vaudeville circuit, a comedy act titled "Fun in Hi Skule" and therefore, knew the Marx Brothers would show up. In fact, Julius (Groucho) does show up with a small speaking role. And that's all I'll say about the many delights found in this book.

Writing about magic and illusions can't be easy, but Gold pulled it off spectacularly, grounding the story in believable characters, the ones based on reality and the ones created to fill out the story. This book is one of the most entertaining books I've ever read. show less

I've got to give Glen David Gold credit for looking for -- and finding -- a good story in some unexpected places. It's one thing to write a book of historical fiction that's set during the French Revolution, or the First World War, or some other well-publicized historical epoch. It's quite another to build your story about Warren G. Harding, fill it with vaudeville-era magicians not named "Harry Houdini" and Secret Service agents, and set it in Oakland, California. You can't accuse this show more author of choosing a well-trodden path, that's for sure. And he certainly knows his material: you'll learn a lot about the mechanics and theories of stage magic, the star-crossed twenty-ninth president, and the history of Northern California's second- (or maybe third-) most famous city.

And, at a sentence level, you can't call him a bad writer, either. His prose is fluid and flexible, and he imbues his subjects with a lively -- dare I say slightly magical? -- touch that keeps you turning the pages without flirting with pulp theatrics or cheap atmosphere. Gold does a more-than-creditable job of bringing his subjects to life, and, better yet, he skillfully evoking a time in which California still felt very much like a frontier of some sort. The Northern California described in this novel is still somewhat unformed, a place where eccentrics who'd struck it rich still had some room to spread their wings. But I felt that this book's eccentricity was, in a sense, both its strongest and weakest suit. "Carter Beats the Devil" features pirates, smugglers, an enchanting blind woman, a trained lion, a traveling magic show and much more. Its characters experience love and revenge and loss and betrayal and outrageous good fortune. Because Charles Carter, the book's namesake, still experiences a good deal of genuine sadness in his his life, you can't call "Carter Beats the Devil" camp, but some readers will find it a touch too whimsical. It might be no accident that it did quite well on the sales charts just a year before the tragedy that defined the first decades of the new century occurred: I'm not sure it would have fit the national mood after the towers fell. But this you might as well chalk up this criticism to personal preference: this one is, if not the most profound novel I've ever read, a ripping yarn by any reasonable definition. Be warned, though: at well over five hundred pages, it takes a while to get where it's going. Recommended if you suspect that the right author could combine all of the disparate plot elements above into a into one really good read. show less

Quite enjoyable if overlong at 560 pages. Great at scene description, especially the magic acts but even the love scenes. Each scene is a vignette with suspense, surprise and the occasional cliff-hanger. But somehow the book's architecture is wobbly, and characters somewhat blank or stereotyped. The death of President Harding (an actual mystery) is the starter for a mystery plot but it gets confusing, motives are unclear, even of the various Keystone Cop secret servicemen ( why are they show more after him?); by the latter stages i didn't care who'd killed the President, the trail had gone cold, though still enjoying the single scenes. The feel for conjuring and its techniques is also well done.

Slight echo of Davies' Deptford Trilogy which also centres on a conjurer; davies a superior novelist, i'd say. Turns out Carter was a historical character, but i read the book under the impression he was invented. Does it matter? What is truth? show less