by Cathryn_Conroy: This is a touching and grace-filled love story—but it’s a very different kind of love story. There is a twist, a delightful, sensitive, and almost piercing twist: This is a love story about a man and woman. He is gay. She is not.
Still, she loves him so much and so deeply that she spends her life with him because she can’t imagine it any other way. And even after more than 20 years together, it’s not until he dies that she truly gets to know him. That’s not a spoiler. Here are the first two sentences of the novel: “Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story.” Except, of course, it’s the beginning of the story—a wonderful, imaginative, and astonishing story. Oh, you are in for a treat!
Written by Ann Patchett, this is the story of Parsifal, a part-time magician, and his beautiful (actually, stunningly gorgeous) assistant, Sabine. They worked together for 22 years, even making a one-time appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson. When he wasn’t levitating Sabine or sawing her in half or pulling a rabbit out of his hat, Parsifal bought and sold rugs—super high-quality rugs—for a high-end store he owned in Los Angeles. Parsifal’s true love is Phan, a super-wealthy software developer with a mansion in LA in which the three of them live. Phan dies of AIDS, and Parsifal, who also has AIDS, marries Sabine so she will inherit everything. He tells her, “I love you. I want you to be my widow.” Again, none of this is a spoiler.
What happens next is the surprise and grounding of the book. Nearly drowning in grief, Sabine is summoned by Parsifal’s attorney for a meeting where she learns something extraordinary about Parsifal’s past. The man was not who he always claimed to be, and some of his money is going to his mother and two sisters who live in Nebraska…a family he told her had died together in a tragic car crash in Connecticut years ago. Oh, the secrets are astonishing and run very deep.
After this setup, the novel’s core is Sabine meeting these women and learning so much about Parsifal she never knew—some of which is lovely, some hilarious, and much of it heartbreaking and even shocking. This is not only a love story, but also a bittersweet story of loss, transformation, and redemption. But most of all, it is a story about finding hope and light in a time of grief and darkness.
Like many of Ann Patchett’s novels, this is character-driven rather than plot-driven. Not a lot particularly happens, but at the same time everything in the world is happening. It’s brilliant, and to make a play on words a magician would appreciate, it is filled with good tricks that will amaze you.
This a magical, spellbinding story, and Ann Patchett is a magical, spellbinding storyteller who will keep you glued to the book until the very end.
A nitpick: Parsifal’s family’s last name is Fetters. For some reason, the author and copy editor never corrected a huge error. When the family is named in the plural, it is still “Fetters” when it should be “the Fetterses,” which is awkward sounding and awkward to read, I know. The English major in me cringed every time it appeared, which is a lot. On the other hand, the English major in my appreciated the name choice for its symbolism. “Fetters” means chains or shackles that prevents someone from moving forward, and life with his family in Nebraska kept Parsifal in fetters until he managed to escape.
