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| Saturday, March 10, 2012 02:18 PM |
| (Last updated on Sunday, March 11, 2012 09:12 PM) | | Book Report - The Prestige |
 by Fëanor |
First of all, wow.
I just read the last section of this book - a 1995 novel by Christopher Priest - and it was fantastic. A breathless final dash at the very end of what was otherwise a very slowly and carefully built story, full of atmosphere, mystery, and menace.
The book opens with a short section set in the present, narrated by a young reporter who calls himself Andrew Westley. A woman sends him an old book and lures him to an old house, in the hopes that he will help her unravel a mystery, and put to rest a long-standing feud. The next section of the novel is the old book itself - a journal written by Andrew's ancestor, Alfred Borden, a magician. It plunges us back into the past - the late 19th and early 20th century. Borden tells us the story of his life, and of his rivalry with another magician named Rupert Angier. But Borden warns us up front (in one of the most excellent passages in the book) that this story will be like one of his magic tricks - a misdirection, an illusion - and that the essential mystery at the heart of it will never be revealed, unless we can work it out ourselves. To explain how completely that mystery rules his life, he tells a wonderful anecdote about another magician named Ching Ling Foo, which is another of the most excellent passages in the book.
Borden's most famous magic trick is called The New Transported Man. In it, Borden seems to be transported instantaneously from one part of the stage to the other. His rivalry with Angier mostly centers around this trick, how it's performed, and Angier's attempts to better it.
The next part of the book is a short section set in the present, this one narrated by one of Angier's descendants: Kate Angier, the woman who gave Andrew the book. She tells a horrific story out of her past, and then she and Andrew try to work out how to finally end the rivalry that has somehow continued through the years between their two families. Next, another journal tells us the story of Rupert Angier's life, and of the other side of the rivalry. This journal revisits many of the events from Borden's diary, but now we see them in a new light, and much is revealed that was mysterious before. A final section, again set in the present and again narrated by Andrew, offers yet more revelations.
The Prestige presents you with a series of mysteries early on, and doesn't solve all of them explicitly until the very end, although I usually was able to work out what was going on well before the book made things crystal clear. But that's all right, because the book is less about sudden moments of shock and surprise than it is about slowly building a sense of unease, and slowly making it impossible for you not to recognize a horrible truth, the evidence for which it has been piling around you for pages. That being said, sometimes it really did feel like the book was taking a bit too long to get where it was going. I spent the first half or so really unsure how I felt about it, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and wondering what that shoe would look like.
The technique of telling essentially the same story twice in a row, once from one perspective and once from another, has the potential to be pretty boring, but Priest handles it well. If you're like me, you'll spend the first half of the book thinking of Borden as the hero and Angier as the villain. Then when you get into the second half, you'll find yourself slowly switching sides, and then finally realizing there are no sides. There are only two men - the perfect complements of one another: one precise, clever, and intellectual; the other emotional, impulsive, and simple - who love many of the same things, and even the same people, but who, because of fate, pride, poor decisions, and various misunderstandings, completely destroy each other's lives, not to mention the lives of those who come after them.
I was talking about the book with a friend a while back and he said it was interesting because it didn't fit comfortably into any established genre, but from the experiences I had with it, I think I would feel safe describing it as horror. There's a particular section narrated by Kate Angier that I found utterly chilling and even traumatic to read, and was glad I was able to have a walk in the sunshine afterwards to recover. And the final section of the book is pure, unadulterated horror.
As I said before, I spent most of my time reading The Prestige in a state of tension, unsure of where it was going, unsure of whether I was going to like it or not, waiting to see how it was going to turn out. I guess in that way it's like a lot of magic tricks. The good news is, I applauded and was astounded at the end, as I'd hoped.
I look forward to seeing Christopher Nolan's film adaptation. It's hard to imagine it being anything less than brilliant. |
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