Customer Reviews

The Magician: A Novel

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It's hard to believe how few people know of this book. I first heard of it while reading one of Sol Stein's books on writing. From his own descriptions of it my curiosity was piqued and I resolved to find a copy of it if I could. Two years later I was fortunate enough to pick it up at a book sale and read the whole thing during the course of a six hour road journey and two nine hour flights on my way to and from Japan.

I was not expecting it to be as good as it was. Surely more people know of this book?

In a way, dare I say it, this book recalls To Kill a Mockingbird to my mind. They are similar in that they both deal with legal ethics, youngsters and America in the 20th century. The similarity probably stops there.

The premise is that Ed Japhet, aged sixteen, is an ameteur magician, and a pretty good one at that. Not only is he skilled in sleight of hand, he also oozes charisma and intelligence. He is the sort of young man that people can often be jealous of, and this is where the trouble begins.

To speak more of the plot would be to give it away, as I found that part of the pleasure in reading this book was not knowing anything about what was going to happen.

It is part legal thriller, part social commentary, and definitely worth a look at.

This book kept me on the couch totally absorbed and turning pages. I don't want to give any of it away but if this was required reading in high school many more students would come to love reading and the history of the book is just as interesting. Go ahead spend the day with these characters, you won't be sorry.

"The Magician" allows your eyes to sail through the pages as if there weren't words but actual events and thoughts occurring before you. Entertaining, powerful, emotional, and immensely smooth, Stein's masterpiece will not disappoint.

It is fascinating tale of adolescent boys set in the suburbs of New York City. After a prom night party, where Ed, a sixteen year old master magician, performs in front of the entire school , he gets beaten by another sixteen year old boy, yurrick, who is a under achiever, a "lower class" slob. Ed's father and his girl friend, who also gets roughed up, are the eye witness to the horrid affair. The case goes to trial. Yurrick even goes to the hospital where Ed is in the intensive care unit, and cuts the oxygen tube. He is caught running away from the room after his dastardly act.

However, the under achiever is represented by a brilliant attorney, Tomassi, who makes a mockery of the judicial system. All he has to do is to convince one out of 12 jurors of his client's innocence and make the whole affair look like a kids brawl. The reader is caught up in the emotions and wants to shout out loudly for justice but then again if we are in the same situation, we would pick up the phone and ask for Tomassi!.

A brilliant commantary on our court system.

as a sophmore in high school in 1978. I needed something to read and just happened to check it out. I was floored by the story and to this day still recommend it to my friends. Somehow as a gangly insecure teenager I related to this book which I read around the same time as the film "My Bodyguard" was released; another classic in film form.

After reading Stein's how-to books on writing, I was impressed. However, after reading his novel, The Magician, I was left scratching my head. Several of the opening pages are nothing but narrative, boring narrative, at best. There was no "starting the story in the middle of something," as suggested in his how-to books. Just a long droll through an old town with snow and ice and a setting of meloncholy. Once inside the story I didn't get a sense of adversarial dialogue as Stein suggests that all beginning writers to do.
The story was technically good but---and maybe it has something to do with its time period---I found its diction disappointingly ironic from such a brilliant teacher on writing.
To be fair, I'll try reading more of his fiction work.

This book is phenomenal. I couldn't put it down. IT is the story of a young adolescent that is exploring his own sexuality and magic. He is caught in a web of legalities, and is represented by a true magician.