Customer Reviews

The Houdini Girl: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I normally don't respond to other people's review, but I have to here. Houdini Girl is not about magic and is not supposed to be a magical love story. It is a novel that makes a thoroughly inventive use of illusion and explores the deceit and secrets between two people who had completely different perceptions of each other. I found nothing offensive in the book and found it to be the ONLY book about a magician/illusionist that understood the concept of 20th century magic as entertainment. Bedford's insights into the obsession with dismembering women and rearranging women's bodies in the guise of entertainment and its correlation to the male obsession with sexually possessing and coveting women's bodies is one of the more original aspects of this fascinating book. It's the story of discovering the truth about what and who you thought you fell in love with and not a "love story" at all.

Martyn Bedford's "The Houdini Girl" was on all the major book reviewers' recommended list last season. I can see why. On the surface, HG reads like a none too extraordinary murder mystery. The heroine gets bumped off real early. She leaves behind a grieving and befuddled lover who sleuths away to discover that she had led another life in secret whilst cohabitating with him. As he peels off the layers to unmask her real identity, we are thrown into a nightmarish world of sex abuse, drugs, prostitution, a make believe family history and a sordid past that made Rosa Kelly the damaged person she had become. Her love affair with magician Brendan Fletcher never had a chance. It was doomed from the start because she'd lost her innocence and was in no fit state to accept let alone give love. All in all, pretty unexceptional stuff, you might think, but what elevates HG above the more formularic efforts of others writing in the same genre is Bedford's craft in exquisitely blending the thriller with the human interest elements to produce a novel that is at once gripping, intelligent, touching and believable. His contrasting treatment of the illusionist's magic and Rosa's deliberate deception of Brandon is both poignant and painful. The premise for HG wasn't especially promising but the result is spectacular. The book reviewers were right. HG is a wonderfully entertaining novel you wouldn't want to miss.

"The characters in Martyn Bedford's persuasive novel will remain vividly in your mind even when you've finished reading about them. The Houdini Girl is an impressive achievement--elegantly crafted, utterly convincing, and deeply felt" -Arthur Golden, author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

Boy meets girl. Girl moves in with boy the next day. Boy and girl live together until one year later, girl leaves boy. The twist here is that the boy (Red) is a magician and the girl (Rosa) turns up dead before he even knows she's left him. What happened here? And who was Rosa really?

The first part of the book is engaging and we see snippits of Red and Rosa's life together in flashblacks, as well as Red's gradual discoveries that Rosa was not what she seemed. Red makes a sympathetic character, UNTIL we come to the second part of the book, where Red steps out of character and starts acting like a master detective (only for the sake of bringing the plot forward it seems). Red's actions are so unbelievable that the book turns nearly into a farce. Still, I read eagerly on, waiting for the payoff: what happened to Rosa?

Some reviewers have noted that this book isn't easily forgettable, and I'd have to agree. Although I won't be keeping this one on my bookshelf, I did have an enjoyable time reading it.

At the onset of this novel, Red meets Rosa, and promptly falls for her. The seduction begins with a simple magic trick -- and the deception inherent in magic becomes indicative of the year they spend together.

With the death of Rosa, Red comes to find much of his girlfriend's life was an illusion. He commmences a journey to unfurl the mystery of Rosa, which takes him to Amsterdam's seedy Red Light district, and only creates more difficult to answer questions. It is difficult for him to locate information on Rosa, and what he discovers only makes matters more perplexing.

Bedford is a gifted writer, and he masterfully tells this tale of smoke and mirrors. Most chapters begin with an diary entry written by Rosa, and they are exceptionally well written and provide incredible first person insight into Rosa's character and personal circumstances. Unlike other writers who use the same tone for multiple characters, Bedford skillfully creates very different voices for each of the characters in this novel.

This story is a delicious combination of detective novel, love story, magic and brilliant writing. Satisfying and recommended.

The Houdini Girl is definitely my book of the Year. It is a thriller with a murder, or at least an assisted involuntary death, it is also a love story in the Shakespearean mould with double identities confounding the course of love. From the beginning illusion is a theme, even the opening paragraph misleads. Bedford explores the difference between illusion and deceit in a witty, moving and tense novel that gathers pace like the train that the eponymous character leaves with such tragic affect.

As the main character (Red, the master prestidigitator) explains, there is a difference between magic and lies which is defined by the relationship between the protagonists. A magician and his audience enter into a conspiracy to sustain an illusion, the magician tricks his audience, who nevertheless know that they are being tricked, therefore there is no lie. Bedford tricked me, too, with this tale. Martyn Bedford is a magician, I looked for the trick behind the illusion but there is none. He just really is that good.

The Houdini Girl is a fascinating study written in a style which introduces elements of clear straight forward writing, internal flashbacks and Magic. The author has interwoven all of these elements in a mystery story:one that carries the reader forward while at the same time making him/her stop to view past events helping to explain the action that had taken place. Red and Kim, Red and Rosa and Rosa and her past fascinate. The tricks of Magic are never explained although the story and mystery are. While the reader pines for this information to unfold quickly, he is happy to interrupt the story line to have the past explained. This is a very well written and interesting novel, although with no new takes on the dreary and seamy side of life.

The more I think about it, the more this book impresses me. Bedford slowly reveals details, allowing the story to come together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The story becomes increasingly compelling as it moves along. Bedford's use of magic and illusion as metaphor is brilliant and thought-provoking. A book well worth reading

I loved this book! Unlike many which fade or disappear from memory shortly after finishing, this one will stay with you. You're hooked from the Prologue, and each chapter closing leaves you with more questions than answers. Yet, as the story progresses, all the loose ends are neatly tied up & the tragic twists and turns seem inevitable. Part mystery, part love story, part erotic thriller -- this is literary fiction at its best!

...this is a tale involving drugs and prostitution. One ought not expect Pollyanna to appear in the dramatis personae.

This is, indeed, a genre-breaker--certainly *not* a love story, certainly not (entirely) a mystery. The incessant exploration of what is real and what is illusion is what drives this wonderfully introspective tome ceaselessly forward. One is never quite certain who is deceiving whom.

Most books fade from consciousness with nary a whimper. Not this one.