Customer Reviews

Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It seemed impossible to top Big FIsh, but Daniel Wallace did it with Mr. Sebastian. It's a rich and emotional mystery full of amazing magic, epic love, undying friendship, and heartbreaking tragedy. The story unfolds beautifully, and keeps you guessing right up to the end. It's almost impossible to get into the plot without giving things away so I won't.
I don't want to overhype the book, but it's REALLY good. I can't wait for the movie. Hopefully Tim Burton will do this one too. It seems right up his alley for sure.

Daniel Wallace works his magic again. "Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician" is sure to please fans of "Big Fish"--it's just as thrilling, poignant, bighearted, and vividly visual. But it's also an extended and multilayered portrait of a fascinating group of people--circus freaks and ordinary folk struggling through the Depression and their own complex lives--and their voices are pitch-perfect. This novel is highly, wickedly entertaining, mysterious, suspenseful, and, finally, heartbreaking--but it's the kind of heartbreak that leaves you smiling through your tears. Run out and buy it, and write a letter to your favorite Hollywood director demanding the film. Work like this deserves your support.

Sometimes a good writer can become a bit precious when they tell a story with a number of different narrators. This is the approach Wallace uses here and while it often fascinates, it also frustrates. The reader can admire his talent, but that admiration is blunted by the loss of clarity it brings. I found myself getting annoyed rather than being intrigued. There is a lot to like here, an intriguing plot, and an honest examination of the racism that has plagued America, but I did find myself less than satisfied by the end. This novel ends up being more clever than it is compelling.

Mr. Wallace takes us on a fantastic voyage through an incredibly colorful world filled with complex and fascinating characters. A poignant, thoughtful and thoroughly involving story that left me questioning my own memories as much as those of Mr. Sebastian. I've been a big fan of the author's work for years and have read all his previous books but this is by far his best. In short, a work of art.

I've given this book four stars because it is beautifully written and creatively told through a series of narrators who each bring his/her own perspective on the truths about the life of the main character, Henry Wallace, the "negro" magician. The reader is drawn in from the get go and follows a path of anticipation that the next page will lead to something even more astounding than the one before. The author delivers.

I did genuinely enjoy the experience of reading this book in part because
the reader is advised early on not to believe everything that the narrators relate. Until the end though one is not sure where the truth lies. In that sense this period piece about a man's mostly tragic journey through life becomes a mystery story within itself. The theme of reality vs. illusion plays out with the main character's magical skills of illusion paralleling the manner in which the story is told. Kind of clever, really.

I did have two frustrations upon completing the book. One is that since our protagonist is such a long suffering victim of one loss after another, I found myself wondering at the end what the point of it all was. He wasn't a bad person that somehow deserved to suffer these losses. So what's the lesson here? Sure, bad things happen to good people and there is usually no good explanation for that; but every opportunity for something meaningfully good or redemptive that could happen to our lead character is snatched away like an unassuming butterfly caught in a net.

My ultimate frustration, however, occurs when the truth is revealed late in the book but not to the two characters who could benefit most from it. They live and die with their memories both real and illusory as the truth never arrives at their doors in time to save or heal them. To me that was the tragedy of the story and the disappointment as to how it ends. I guess I like my endings a bit more tidily wrapped than this one is. Nonetheless, a compellingly strong read.

In my humble opinion,
mix Ray Bradbury and John Fowles (specifically THE MAGUS)
and one gets Wallace (specifically MR. SEBASTION.....)
For what it's worth, I loved it.

Bruce Langford
Professor of Music
Citrus College
Glendora, CA

Daniel Wallace has struck gold again with "Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Musician." The story of Henry Walker, once one of the world's greatest musicians through a deal with the devil--or so we are told--is a magical tale that shifts in time, place and storyteller. Whose truth should we believe? Wallace draws vivid characters and places that linger in the mind's eye of the reader. It is no accident that Big Fish made a wonderful film and this one has the same cinematic scope of the imagination. This is not the book for those who need a direct, linear narrative, but for those with imagination willing to go with the flow, this is a magical story that questions the nature of family, of love, of friendship, of truth. Enjoy!

How much of your inner torment is due to your imagination? How much have your pleasant memories been revised to make them even better? Have you ever done anything in your life that later made you cringe when you thought about it from the other person's perspective? But do you really know how it affected them? What has disappeared from your life: things, people, trust, emotion, truth? How much have you gained from your losses? Daniel Wallace knows. Henry Walker told him. Read this book.

Daniel Wallace has written his best novel. An unusual author with a strong grasp of style and narrative, here he masters the polarities of tragedy and comedy, weaving a mystifying tale of multiple realities. The story twists and turns inside out on itself, but somehow Wallace makes it easy to follow through a variety of narrators. You'll meet Bakara from the darkest Congo and Spiderella, the human tarantula; listen to the whispers of the Ossified Girl and the weeping of the Strongest Man in the Entire World; mingle with all the lost freaks who have found their home and family in Jeremiah Mosgrove's Chinese Circus. In this fiction unfolds the complex truth behind success and failure. Instead of giving us moralistic answers to the riddles of life, Wallace shows us the myths, beliefs, and desires underlying them, revealing a greater timeless existence that refuses to be easily explained or contained, where safety may be sacrificed for beauty, survival for bitter wisdom, where love is always the price of resurrection. This book moves beyond our simple civilized dreams, deep into primal joy and despair, to a transcedent ending that evokes a compassionate acceptance of our common humanity. All of this done with subtle graceful prose that makes the most surreal events seem natural and inevitable. With "Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician" Daniel Wallace has moved into the front ranks of American novelists.

I was very frustrated by the end of this novel, narrated by different characters telling different versions of the story. Was Mr. Sebastian the devil, a serial child molester, a regular human being? Was the Magician a poor deluded adult grown from a poor deluded child, or was his version of events correct? Argh . . . . .

This is the second novel I've read in as many weeks with an "unreliable narrator" and this type of narrator(s) I can do without. I want, if not the truth, at least a hint of what the true story is. Perhaps the hint was there and I missed it.

I read all 500+ pages and enjoyed most of them, but felt frustrated and defeated by the contradictory tales.