Saturday’s Books: “Postcards” and “The Magician’s Assistant”

This week I finished both my audio-book and my “printed book”.

I chose “Postcards” by E. Annie Proulx at the localĀ  library because I loved her previous book “The Shipping News”. I enjoyed the movie, too.

The writing style does not disappoint but I was quite unhappy with this book. If the writing hadn’t been so good I wouldn’t have finished it. It says on the back cover: “Loyal (the name of the main character, what a name!) comes to symbolize the alienation and frustration behind the American Dream”. That may be true, but for me it seemed like a tale of endless misery and woe and I found it quite depressing.

I chose Ann Patchett’s “The Magician’s Assistant” as my third audiobook of my gift subscription. I really enjoyed “Bel Canto”, “State of Wonder” and “Run” and discovered that my local library doesn’t carry this particular book. At first I was a bit disappointed. This book deals a lot with magic, but it didn’t cast a spell on me immediatly the way the other books had. The beginning seems bogged down with too many details. But then it got much better. I became very involved with the characters and was quite sad when the book ended. The reader was so good, the characters seemed alive and I miss them a bit! Its an early book of hers and I do agree that the others are better but I’m so glad I didn’t miss this one!

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