The Magician's Girl (Paperback)

by Doris Grumbach (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Initially restrained, this story of three young women coming to maturity in New York City in the 1930s soon becomes engrossing, as the characters quicken into attractive and sympathetic life. They meet at Barnardpretty, middle-class Minna; Liz, a Greenwich Villager mad about photography; and fat, pig-eyed, dough-faced Maud, on scholarship from an obscure upstate high school. Poor and unprepossessing, Maud is a poet who fascinates Leo Luther, arguably the handsomest boy at Columbia. He takes her to bed, marries her, begets upon her twin sons and, predictably, drifts off. Maud's life is thereupon reduced to scribbled-on bits of paper and the detritus left by two neglected children. Although Minnawho becomes a fairly distinguished professor of history and at age 60 falls improbably in love with a youth years her junioris the focal character, and though Liz grows famous for her photographs of the odd and egregious, neither is vibrant enough to move out of Maud's shadow. The author's creation has eluded her control and usurped, willy-nilly, the novel, the lives of her classmates and the imaginations of those who read about her.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
The three "girls" in this novel meet as roommates at Barnard in the late Thirties. Maud, the daughter of a quiet father and a mother who inexplicably studies the Miss America pageant, becomes a poet, better known after her suicide than before. Liz, the daughter of Communist parents, makes a name for herself by photographing physically unusual peoplegiants, accident victims. The most outwardly conventional of the three is Minna, an academic who leads a fairly middle-class life until the death of her son snaps her out of the world of the predictable. Minna moves to Iowa, the last place she expects to find surprises, and unexpectedly forms an unconventional romantic attachment. Grumbach's well-crafted novel will appeal to readers for whom the passage of time is disconcerting but not frightening. For larger collections. Mary K. Prokop, CEL Regional Lib., Savannah, Ga.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393310914
• ISBN-13: 978-0393310917
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,903,024 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars grim yet beguiling, December 28, 2000

By A Customer

The book isn't what I expected--it's probably better! I thought it would be a lighthearted look at three college friends, but it has some very grim and depressing scenes about childhood incidents that leave permanent psychic scars on the characters. Added to that are the physical damages to subordinate characters (Maud's brother Spencer, the unfortunate Aaron who suffers from a form of giantism, and a surprise revelation about the famous English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle). Nevertheless, there is room in this slim volume for humor, insight, and self-revelation. The author starts with the childhood circumstances of Minna, Maud and Liz and follows them to college at Barnard and life's successes and failures and that ultimate punctuation to life--death. P.S. I've got to ask Doris Grumbach if she sees this--where did she come up with a character from the choir of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Lincoln, Nebraska? That's the church where I was baptized, confirmed, and where my mother was married and my sister was married. I even sang in the youth choir although not in the adult choir (I can't carry a tune and want to sing the soprano melody line although my voice is more suited to alto). I also chuckled at her one- or two-word description of the Midwest. These provided some of the lighter moments for me.