Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

Traveling though the South in the 1950s with Jeremiah Musgrove's Chinese Circus, green-eyed black magician Henry Walker pays penance for having made his sister disappear, but having failed to bring her back. The bestselling author of BIG FISH once again employs multiple narrators and points of view. Narrator Tom Stechschulte leads talented readers Alyssa Bresnahan, T. Rider Smith, and others through a fantastic world peopled with circus freaks and cruel crowds. This haunting, tender story transports listeners through time and space as it depicts a childhood fantasy with an emotional payoff that's both heartwarming and tragic. Did Henry sell his sister to the devil so he could become a world-class illusionist? The answer isn't as important as the question. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

April 9, 2007
An inept African-American illusionist is dogged by the deal he struck with the devil in Wallace's fourth novel, a circus picaresque that barnstorms its way through the 1950s American South. Henry Walker, once the "greatest magician in the world," has been reduced to a minstrel show–like novelty act in a traveling circus. Henry's story, told by a succession of narrators—including members of the circus and a private detective—begins during the Depression, when Henry's family fell on hard times. While down and out, Henry meets and apprentices with the devilish magician Mr. Sebastian. Henry learns the secrets of magic, but his ambition and ability are crimped when his beloved sister, Hannah, disappears. The truths of Henry's and Mr. Sebastian's identities and the fate of Hannah are gradually revealed, and what appears to be a Faustian tale of a pact with the devil turns out to be something more tragic. Wallace (Big Fish
; The Watermelon King
) skillfully unravels the tale, and though the conclusion is both startling and inevitable, and Henry is as beguiling and enigmatic a character as Wallace has created, the milieu of carnies, hucksters, tricksters and wanderers isn't as sharp as it could be.