The Illusioniist [Hardcover]

Dinitia Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 1997

The unexpected appearance of Dean Lily, a charismatic young man with magical gifts, dramatically transforms a once beautiful town in Upstate New York, and prompts the age-old question: what do women really want? But the women he sets his sights on are incapable of recognizing him for what he is.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Dean Lily, amateur magician and androgynous scoundrel, drifts into the economically depressed, drug-infested town of Sparta, New York. The townspeople are both mesmerized and repelled by Dean's blurry gender and his ease in wooing and wounding one faithful young woman after another, each of whom swears he is the most tender of manly lovers. Of course, he is not. Dean Lily, born Lily Dean, was miserable as a girl until she found some psychosexual peace once she started binding her breasts and dressing and acting as a man. In Sparta, Dean enrages a pair of drunken lowlifes who, desperate to show an old girlfriend that Dean is a fraud, rape and threaten to kill him if he goes to the police, thus setting in motion the inevitable tragedy. Based loosely on a true hate crime in Humboldt, Nebraska, Smith's novel is a deeply disturbing and provocative study not only of the transsexual psyche but of the meaning of romantic love and its attendant powers of denial.?Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., Mich.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The unfathomable mysteries of sexual identity and charisma permeate this dark, meditative tale of a transsexual's murder in upstate New York, by the author of The Hard Rain (1980) and Remember This (1989)--inspired by an actual incident in Nebraska. It's a chilly October night in quiet Sparta, New York, when Chrissie, a local community-college student, first spots Dean Lily performing magic tricks at the local bar. Though the regulars can't help but gather around the magician's table, there's something about this slight, bright-eyed stranger that makes them vaguely uncomfortable. As Chrissie learns once Dean, who's been living in his truck, gratefully moves into her downtown apartment, Dean Lily is really Lily Dean--a man born in a woman's body about 20 years ago in another small town near the Canadian border. Surprisingly, Chrissie doesn't care much that Dean is physically female. For reasons this plain, boyfriendless part-time nursing-home employee can't begin to fathom, she's too strongly attracted to Dean's emotional intensity, butterfly-like elusiveness, and essential strangeness to judge him according to the usual standards. Instead, she watches uneasily as he seduces her boss at the nursing home--a gawky single mother just barely surviving in a shack outside town- -and then mischievously helps him betray his lover by setting up a meeting with the famously unattainable local beauty queen. With each encounter, Dean touches on sexual needs and primal passions previously buried deep beneath the surface of his partners' monotonous daily life--so effectively, in fact, that little time passes before one man's jealous rage and sexual terror explode to destroy Dean and devastate the people who claim to love him most. Smith's harsh but deadly accurate evocation of late-20th- century rural life almost upstages the violent drama in the foreground. Still, both prove memorable in this haunting exploration of a senseless and brutal murder. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st edition (November 6, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684843293
• ISBN-13: 978-0684843292
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,373,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars eerie similarities, but no credit to the real life "Dean", January 20, 2000

By 

"kahlofreak" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Illusionist (Paperback)

Because I already know all about the true story that inspired this novel, the book was nearly ruined for me. All eerie similarities to Brandon's real life aside (the accidental phone call and the rollerskating date, Brandon's girlfriend bailing him out of jail with a check her mother intended for the hairdresser, being put in a psychiatric ward after swallowing an entire bottle of antibiotics when his first serious girlfriend dumped him when she found out her boyfriend was really a girl...etc. ), this book is very good. You can't put it down- I read it in two days.

I was only disappointed that there wasn't even a paragraph about Brandon at the end or beginning of the book (but there was the little disclaimer paragraph that states any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.? ....or do they put that in all books?).

Like the movie "Boys Don't Cry", this book recounts the character's, in this case, Dean's, last month alive. So if the end seems rushed, it is. That's how it happened.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting read that will keep you going, September 23, 1998

By 

douglas k ritter - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Illusioniist (Hardcover)

Proof positive, again, that truth is stranger than fiction, The Illusionist is a fictionalized version of the murder of Brandon Teena in Falls City, Nebraska. It makes for a gripping (and at times gruesome read), but the story is true -- and the subject of the new documentary movie,"The Brandon Teena Story", (produced and directed by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir) and probably not coming to the neighborhood multiplex. The story is also proof (if incidents like the recent one in Jasper, Texas weren't enough), that sordid happenings occur in small town America just like in the big cities.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A depressing tale of doomed one-dimensional characters ., November 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Illusioniist (Hardcover)

The reader must check his brains at the door to stay with this one. From the main character being referred to as Dean, Deane and Duane to flies buzzing after a holiday blizzard there are problems with this tome. The characters are hard to picture much less sympathize with and the action drags to an inevitable climax but no real resolution. It is frustrating after investing the time to read this that it leaves me shaking my head in wonder that there is no real clear ending.It was like reading through smoked glass or maybe it was censored because something is definitely missing.