The Magician's Assistant

“She was the last stop for all of the accumulations and memorabilia, all the achievements and sentimentality of two lives, and one of those lives should not have come to her in the first place.”

This quote characterizes Sabine as the caretaker of Phan and Parsifal’s memory, love, and life. When they die, she is literally left behind in life, just as she was metaphorically left behind in love. In this context, Phan’s memory, presence, and influence in Sabine’s life are less welcome to her than Parsifal’s, which emphasizes the complicated nature of their unconventional family.

“In the fullness of life Sabine had been jealous of Phan, jealous that Parsifal had found someone else to love so much. Jealous because she had wanted that for herself and so understood. What was Sabine, then, but an extra woman, one who was inevitably dressed in a satin body stocking embroidered with spangles?”

Phan and Parsifal’s love mirrors Sabine’s love for Parsifal. However, there is an inequality in their love, as Sabine’s love is unrequited. Sabine and Phan are two parts of one whole because they share the same love for Parsifal. This quote emphasizes that dynamic, and it also characterizes Sabine as an objectified person who fulfills a role that does not quite fit her nature because she is dedicated to maintaining a performance (or, in the case of her marriage, a family).

“There was a certain perverse benefit to the situation anyway: Sabine was his family. Hers was the framed picture at his bedside. She was always his past, his oldest friend, mother, sister, and finally wife. History began in a time after they had met.”

At the beginning of the novel, Sabine’s characterization and identity are tied to Parsifal, and this quote highlights the many roles she fulfilled in his life. Because the unconventional arrangement allowed her, Parsifal, and Phan to build a meaningful, loving life together, this dynamic is implied to negate Parsifal’s lies about his family of origin, for Sabine’s lack of knowledge about the person he used to be allows her to embrace who he has become.

“She could not make out his face beneath the white cloud of his warm breath. It was one thing to have spent your life in love with a man who could not return the favor, but it was another thing entirely to love a man you didn’t even know.”

In this quote, Patchett emphasizes the complicated unknowability of other people. The “white cloud of his warm breath” in this quote is a metaphor for the mystery that is Parsifal’s lies after death. This quote challenges Sabine’s sense of herself and questions if it is possible to love somebody who fabricated significant aspects of their past.

“Suddenly to have the privilege of wearing your own skin, the headlong rush of love, the loss of the knifepoint of loneliness. That was the true life, the one you would admit to. Why even mention the past? It was not his past. He was a changeling, separated at birth from his own identity.”

This quote characterizes Parsifal as an empowered individual who leaves his past behind in a deliberate attempt to improve his present and his future. Parsifal is not tied down from the past, which suggests that Sabine doesn’t have to be either. This quote provides a sympathetic look into Parsifal’s lies and celebrates his efforts at self-actualization.

“Those were confidences, things that had to be earned. It took intimacy and that took time, and while she had seemingly limitless amounts of the latter, she had no stomach for the former. People made her tired. The way they were easy with one another, the way they seemed so natural, only made her sad.”

In this quote, Patchett highlights the unknowability of other people. Intimacy, to Sabine, is having intimate knowledge of another person, but her relationship with Parsifal challenges this definition, for he kept many secrets from her during his life. This quote also highlights that Sabine now lacks the energy required to truly get to know people at their core, and she therefore feels all the more left out when she sees people who are intimately comfortable with one another.

“In Los Angeles he was never afraid. So maybe that was why he didn’t tell her. Maybe it was better to keep it that far away, to never have to look at someone who was remembering when you have made such a concerted effort to forget.”

Los Angeles is symbolized here as a setting of freedom and empowerment. This quote also emphasizes that individuals have the right to reconstruct their identity and their story. In trying to escape from his past, Parsifal kept secrets from his loved ones so that they would not be receptacles for the trauma he tried to forget.

“They lived in the magnificence of a well-watered desert where things that could not possibly exist, thrived. They lived on the edge of a country that would not have cared for them anyway, and they were loved. They were home. Do not speak badly of Los Angeles to Parsifal and Sabine.”

In this quote, Los Angeles symbolizes the connection between Parsifal and Sabine, for both characters found solace and freedom in the city. Los Angeles is also a place that accepts and welcomes unconventionality, which is why Parsifal and Sabine work so well together within that setting.

“Magicians all across the world managed quite well without assistants, but without magicians, the assistants were lost.”

This quote captures the internal conflict that Sabine faces with her identity after Parsifal’s death. Without Parsifal, her magician, she has no purpose. This loss is metaphorically modeled through the problematic and codependent dynamics of the magician-assistant relationship, which echoes Sabine and Parsifal’s offstage relationship as well.

“She was just beginning to see the edges of a hunger she didn’t know she had. When Parsifal died she lost the rest of his life, but now she had stumbled on eighteen years. Eighteen untouched years that she could have; early, forgotten volumes of her favorite work. A childhood that could be mined month by month. Parsifal would not get older, but what about younger?”

Getting to know Parsifal’s family causes her to succumb to the illusion that she can revive Parsifal in some form. By getting closer to his family—and especially to Kitty, who resembles him so closely—Sabine believes that she is accessing the parts of Parsifal that he hid from her.

“But in the room that was his room, Sabine felt different. She felt a rush of that privacy that comes not from being alone but from being with the one person you are completely comfortable with…closed, this door was freedom itself. How he must have hidden in that room, begged to be sent there for punishment. There was not a single corner of it that he hadn’t memorized.”

Physically standing in Parsifal’s childhood bedroom allows Sabine to indulge further in the illusion that all his former deceptions are melting away into a newfound clarity. The room is a symbol of the Parsifal that Sabine didn’t know, the one named Guy, and as a physical altar to Parsifal’s memory, it metaphorically holds all the pain he struggled through as a teenager.

“When she turned off the light, she listened to the wind circle the house like a pack of howling dogs. The wind made Sabine nervous. She thought of all that emptiness, Nebraska stretching out flat in every direction like a Spanish map of the world. In her mind she tried to conjure the sounds of helicopters and police cars to sing herself to sleep, the reassuring hum of civilization.”

In this quote, Patchett sets up a dichotomy between Los Angeles and Nebraska. Nebraska is empty, flat, and morose, while Los Angeles is loud and full of diverse interactions. This juxtaposition between the two settings emphasizes the freedom that Sabine and Parsifal found in Los Angeles, while Nebraska represents the restrictions and traumas that Parsifal escaped.

“But there was never a man she wanted to run to when she saw him, a man in whose neck she longed to bury her face and recount every detail of her day. There was never a man she felt could make every difference simply by holding her to his chest and saying her name. Except for Parsifal, and he was not a lover. Except now, for Phan, who takes her into his arms and lifts her up above his head, towards the clear night and the stars.”

In Sabine’s dreams, she and Phan are closer than they were in life. Her intimacy with Phan is indicative of her subconscious and her longing for someone who shared her love for Parsifal and can understand her grief. This quote highlights the metaphorical importance of dreams in revealing Sabine’s character development.

“Sabine was waiting to feel devastated by what she knew, but the longer she waited, the more she was sure it wasn’t coming. She had taken all her blows with proper heartbreak: Phan’s death and then Parsifal’s, the surprise of his family, and then all the other surprises. Yet somehow the news that Parsifal had killed his father, killed him, albeit accidentally, with a baseball bat, called up very little.”

This quote emphasizes a major plot twist in which it is revealed that the real reason Parsifal was sent away as a teenager was for accidentally murdering his father while trying to protect his mother from physical abuse. In this context, Parsifal is a tragic hero, and his mother is not the antagonist she was made out to be. That this major plot twist doesn’t emotionally impact Sabine the way death has highlights how deep in grief she is and emphasizes her unconditional love for Parsifal.

“Magic was less about surprise than it was about control. You lead them in one direction and then come up behind their backs. They watch you, at every turn they will be suspicious, but you give them decoys. People long to be amazed, even as they fight it. Once you amaze them, you own them.”

In this quote, stage magic becomes a metaphor for the ways in which people deceive themselves and others. However, Patchett emphasizes that a part of human nature is the desire for this deception, for people are naturally seduced by illusions and engaged in figuring out the trick behind the magic. When they cannot figure it out, they give up their power and succumb to the illusion. This dynamic suggests that Sabine, unlike Parsifal, does not enjoy the power of swaying and controlling people.

“She waved, as if they were going on an adventure and she understood that she had to be left behind. Sabine was sorry to leave her. Kitty would feel guilty about this somehow.”

In this quote, Patchett emphasizes two realities that inform Kitty’s characterization. The first is the sense that Kitty is always being left behind in both grand and inconsequential ways, as when Parsifal escaped Nebraska and when her sister goes to the hospital. Kitty is further constrained by the constant threat of abuse from her husband, Howard; as long as she remains married to him, she will always feel guilty for his actions and apologize for his behavior.

“Sabine knew that if she stayed long enough, she would hate Howard Plate like the rest of them did. She knew there were stories and reasons, and even without them he made a particularly bad impression. Yet there was a strange way in which she felt almost sorry for him now. The way he couldn’t sit comfortably in any room. The way he was outside of his own family.”

In this quote, Patchett characterizes Sabine as an empathic person who finds a sense of connection even to people who remain difficult to like or understand. As a marginal character to other families, Sabine can analyze the Fetters from a more detached, objective point of view. She knows that Howard is difficult and dangerous, but she can also discern the presence of his inner sadness and sense of being ill at ease. With this quote, Patchett implies that all people—even the most irredeemable of antagonists—can contain deeper nuances than their surface-level behavior reveals.

“He had so much to him. Hell, he went off to California and rewrote his whole life history. He could be his own father. My boys aren’t like that. At heart they’re followers, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but they’ll stay exactly where they are for the rest of their lives unless somebody shows them what to do.”

In this quote, Patchett emphasizes the pull between forming one’s own identity and being a follower. It is more difficult to forge one’s own identity because most role models only demonstrate the status quo. This quote emphasizes one of the consequences of Parsifal not being involved with his family; he wasn’t around to teach the next generation how to break free of the same dynamics that once tortured him.

“She was still because he was making some sort of love to her on the stage, because he wanted her to be still so that he could dance around her. She was lifted by him, balanced on the point of the chair. Magic can seem like love.”

Patchett often uses stage magic as a motif for deception, and this quote further emphasizes that point. Parsifal wasn’t making love to Sabine on stage, but their connection on stage was something like love. The magic show enabled Sabine to remain intimately tied to Parsifal throughout the years, but it also gave her the allusion of a closeness that did not encompass everything that Sabine wanted or needed from the relationship.

Patchett often uses stage magic as a motif for deception, and this quote further emphasizes that point. Parsifal wasn’t making love to Sabine on stage, but their connection on stage was something like love. The magic show enabled Sabine to remain intimately tied to Parsifal throughout the years, but it also gave her the allusion of a closeness that did not encompass everything that Sabine wanted or needed from the relationship.

Parsifal’s childhood bedroom is an altar to his memory. It is a symbol of all the missed moments between himself and the rest of his family after he left home forever. By holding on to the room, characters like Kitty hold on to the metaphorical hope that Parsifal will return to them. This quote emphasizes Kitty’s closeness to Parsifal and enhances the tone of loss and grief.

“Two soft mouths made softer by the close proximity of sleep, that dozing, nearly dreaming warmth that made people affectionate, and unembarrassed. Sabine, who had not been kissed in this way for a long time, remembered the feeling and kissed back, some instinctual code patterned deeply in the cells.”

This quote captures a major plot twist in which Patchett suggests that Kitty and Sabine might fall in love or develop a sexual component to their friendship. The passage also emphasizes Sabine’s loneliness, as she has spent decades in love with a man who could not return the full intensity of her love.

“There was between the two of them so much disappointment and relief that Sabine found herself taking shallow breaths. Kitty slipped into the hall and closed the door behind her without stopping or saying good-night, and though Sabine waited, sure that this time she would think of the right thing to say, Kitty did not come back.”

In this quote, Patchett implies that Kitty and Sabine’s relationship is a complex one. They are both disappointed by their individual histories with Parsifal, but they both loved him and accepted him in similar ways. The loss of Parsifal brings Kitty and Sabine together, and although they have many areas of emotional connection, Patchett implies that Kitty—unlike Parsifal—may not be able to overcome the cultural inhibitions of her upbringing.

“‘So why am I here?’ Sabine says. She doesn’t think there needs to be a reason. They haven’t seen each other in so long. That they are together now is reason enough to be anywhere.”

Dreams are an important plot function in this novel. Through dreams, Sabine’s subconscious internal conflicts are explored and resolved. The dreams reveal many nuances about Sabine and her relationships with Parsifal and Phan. In this quote, Patchett creates a vivid impression of Sabine’s dreams in order to honor the metaphor of the dream as a setting in which anything can happen.