The Prestige by Christopher Priest

"My error, at first, was to assume that the sheer brilliance of the effect would be enough to dazzle my audiences. What I was neglecting was one of the oldest axioms of magic, that the miracle of the trick must be made clear by the presentation. Audiences are not easily misled, so the magician must provoke their interest, hold it, then confound every expectation by performing the apparently impossible." - Christopher Priest, The Prestige

The Prestige - Christopher Priest’s highly inventive, masterfully crafted tale written in the grand tradition of Victorian novels of mystery and suspense, specifically Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (use of multiple narrators) and Moonstone (epistolary novel).

The language is so well tuned and exact, so vividly clear, many the time turning the pages I felt as if I was launched miraculously back into the streets, flats and performance halls of turn-of-the-century London. So compelling and thrilling, my response to the British author repeats esteemed critic Garry Indiana's words regarding the literary output of Georges Simenon, “I know how he does it, but I have no idea how he can do it.” Christopher Priest - what a marvelous weaver of fictional magic. And speaking of magic, please read on.

True, the novel begins and ends at a country estate in modern-day England where journalist Andrew Westley and Lady Kate Angier, both young and single, take turns narrating as they sit together and move about in Kate’s family mansion, however this is but the frame – the bulk of the narrative consists of the respective diaries of two of their long dead ancestors, Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier, illustrious stage magicians who had been engaged in a bitter, vindictive rivalry protracted over many years, beginning in the late nineteenth century.

The plot is simply too good and contains too many surprises for me to divulge any tantalizing secrets, thus I will shift my observations to a number of the novel’s underlying themes and philosophical enigmas.

Illusion: Counterpoint to nimble skill and dexterity performing sleight of hand and misdirection, concealment and manipulation on stage, Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier are also master illusionists as each pens his diary. Claiming the two magicians are less than reliable narrators is understatement as we are never entirely certain where the illusions start and where they stop, where reality begins and where it ends. Now you read it, now you don’t. And in case you might not catch the shift since it is so easy to miss, there is one short chapter of the novel where Christopher Priest deftly slides into telling the tale in objective third person – a crafty authorial variation on now you read it, now you don’t.

Revenge: Ah, retaliation, vengeance, payback, reprisal - the juice of mountains of fiction and generous helpings of history. But, as both Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier discover the hard way, the aftermath of vengeful words and actions are never nearly as clear-cut and confined as we might conceive. In many cases, the person extracting revenge is completely oblivious to the full range of consequences, sometimes affecting men, women and children over a number of generations.

Secrecy: An enormous part of a stage magician’s art is secrecy - how the trick is performed. Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier extend their secrecy to nearly all aspects of their personal and professional lives. Of course, the more secrets one has, more the possibility of being discovered. But while a secret remains a secret, the magician maintains a power, an advantage over his audience if stage magic; over his family and associates if his secret pertains to his personal life. The ultimate disgrace for a stage magician – having the secret of his trick revealed publicly during a performance. Of course, this is exactly the practice of both Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier.

Twins: Just think of the power a magician would possess if he had an identical twin he kept secret. All the jaw dropping feats of stage magic he could perform – I’m over here on this side of the stage, presto, in an instant, I’m over there on that side of the stage. Such secrecy and magic might qualify as the ultimate illusion. One could stake a career on such an astounding trick. However, two people going through life pretending they are one and the same person will undoubtedly alter a sense of one’s individual identity, one of the prime hallmarks of what it means to be human. Or, will it? Can a master of illusion pull it off successfully? Many the author captivated by the idea and possibilities of twins, my personal favorite: Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors featuring not one but two sets of twins.

Identity of the Self: Robert Nozick has a thought experiment where, after an accident, half of one person’s brain (along with memory) is transferred to a second person’s body. Both Tim, the giver, and Tom, the receiver, live after the operation and both Tim and Tom claim to be Tim. Are they both right? The next day Tim dies and Tom is now the only person claiming to be Tim. Does Tom (now Tim) assume the old Tim’s rights and obligations, including the right to live with Tim’s wife and kids? The ancient world knew such a dilemma of identity with the ship of Theseus: the planks and other parts of the ship are all replaced over time. After the last old plank is removed and replaced, is it the same ship or a different ship? What if less than half of the ship is replaced? What if more than half is replaced? The variations are endless. The Prestige hurls a few crazy twists into the mix.

Electricity – The end of the nineteenth century, the heyday as stage performers for the novel’s two magicians, was also the heyday for inventors such as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. In 1879 electric lights were first used for public street lighting. The possibilities and power of electricity captured the public’s imagination. And if a performer could include the sizzling, popping currents of this newly found power into their act– what a show!

Jolt of the Weird: Although a Victorian thriller in the tradition of Wilkie Collins, please keep in mind Christopher Priest has been strongly influenced by H. G. Wells. Similar to his science fiction novel Inverted World where events move along at a measured pace until the jolt of the weird, The Prestige has its own weird jolt which leads to a series of even weirder jolts. One of the most fascinating and astonishing last parts of any novel you will ever read. If you are stirred to consider The Prestige, I’m accomplished my own bit of magic as a reviewer.
 

*There is a absolutely first rate audio book available where Simon Vance reads The Prestige.


“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige