The Spirit Cabinet

Chris Knight is copy editor of the National Post in Toronto.

If literature can be seen as a form of magic, mere marks on paper
transporting us to other realms, then Paul Quarrington’s subject
matter is appropriate. His novel is populated by magicians: some real
(Harry Houdini, though long dead, has a profound influence on events),
others fictional or semi-fictional (the protagonists, Jurgen and
Rudolpho, are based on wizards/showmen Siegfried and Roy).

As professional prestidigitators, these characters inhabit a strange
twilight zone. On the one hand, they know how the tricks are done; on
the other, they, like their fans, want to believe in real magic, too.
When an ugly wooden box with supposed magical properties is auctioned
off by its latest keeper for mysterious reasons, the story is driven
forward by the fact that each member of this cadre of magicians is keen
to possess its secrets. The language of the novel is visceral and, in
apparent deference to magic’s long history, at times Victorian. A
crackling sound is described as being “as though all the corpses in
all the coffins in Mьnich had decided to pop their old knuckles.” And
a character whose father was also a magician worries that “his father
would be exposed for the cheap cozening thimblerigger he was.”

Quarrington is deliberately shifty in his descriptions. For instance,
he explains in sharp detail how to make a tiger vanish, then has one of
the characters merely wave his hand to perform an equally
miraculous-seeming trick. Readers are left wondering whether there is
some “real” magic at work after all. Despite the explanations, we
are pulled through this book with the same sense of wonder as a child
watching a rabbit being pulled from an empty hat.