Review: The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda

At last I've finished reading The Art of Disappearing by Ivy Pochoda. For at least 2-3 years, I've been wanting to read this literary fiction debut from the Harvard grad and Brooklynite. The book came out in 2009. It was recommended to me through an online friend or another blogger or in a book forum - I'm not exactly sure now.

I wanted this book to be more romantic than it was, but it's not the book's fault I was expecting more of a love story. Mel Snow, the textiles saleswoman to whom the textiles sing, and the stage magician Toby Warring whose magic is not a trick, are meant to be together for only a finite amount of time and that's just the way it is. One can think of this book as magical realism - it reminded me in this respect of Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry (and probably also The Time Traveler's Wife, although I've seen the movie but not read the book).



On the other hand, it could be taken as an extended metaphor for the fact that the neurological world in which each individual lives is a closed system, and there is no way to let another person inside our own worlds, no matter how much we love them and want to share with them. It's simply the case that magic is Toby's entire world, just as Mel's world is woven through fabrics and her brother Max's world was entirely contained within waters. Their paths cross, and possibly continue to cross infinitely, but they can never truly inhabit one another's worlds. This is a bit of a sad revelation, but the redeeming note is that each world has its own unique beauty.

As in The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, the characters make a trek from the U.S. to Amsterdam. Toward the end, Mel goes to a Saturnalia party thrown by Leo, a friend of several old-time magicians who've formed a sort of society of real magicians who've lost their magic. Leo's Saturnalia tradition is that the party be lit by candles, a bonfire and other natural lights, and that it not end until the lights have all burned out on their own (not blown out) - similar to the Hanukkah tradition of letting the candles all burn out on their own.

Toby appears, and there's some debate about whether he should be adorned with ivy or with holly, for all of the party guests must wear an evergreen to take part in the winter solstice festivities. One of the guests, a Belgian man named Christoph, wants Toby to represent the Holly King, a folkloric figure I brought up in the Imbolc post. (The Holly King rules over half the year, from Winter Solstice to Midsummer Night.) Toby refuses, instead choosing ivy. Ivy, Christoph says, not only represents "wine, ecstasy and bacchanalia," but also, paradoxically, both mortality and resurrection.



Toby has, to some extent, figured out how to move around in time, even if it's only a sort of illusion. Perhaps when Mel married him, she agreed to a never-ending cycle of losing and finding each other. Still, they are ultimately bound to belong to different worlds.

Two Sexcerpts...

...from books I've read recently. First, Ivy Pochoda's description of sex with a magician whose magic isn't based on trickery or deception but on real magic, from The Art of Disappearing.

"I knew she wanted all the details, but I preferred to keep to myself how Toby's hands flew across my body in a maniacal sign language. When I could have sworn that he was massaging my shoulders, suddenly he was tickling my toes. And when I looked at my toes, I noticed that his hands had moved to my hair. And all the time it appeared that he hadn't taken his lips from mine. Sometimes he managed to make the bed vanish as if we were floating toward the ceiling in an erotic levitation. Sometimes the ceiling itself seemed to disappear and the room flooded with the sky. After it was over, after my magician's hands, which had doubled and redoubled as we reached the finale of our private magic show, had collapsed onto the sateen sheets, I woke up to find the remnants of the conjuring pressed into my body. I found coins on my inner thighs, poker chips on my lower back, the jack of diamonds stuck to my left buttock."

I'm on page 97. So far, the writing style of Harvard graduate and Olympic squash player Ivy Pochoda reminds me of Audrey Niffenegger. I never did read The Time-Traveler's Wife, but I did read Her Fearful Symmetry. Both The Art of Disappearing and Her Fearful Symmetry, I suppose, would be considered magical realism. TAOD also slightly reminds me of Christopher Priest's The Prestige, insofar as they deal with stage magicians whose talents lie not only in showmanship. Like Angiers in the movie version of The Prestige, Toby has lost a lovely assistant in a water tank - the difference is that while (minor spoiler) Angiers' wife drowned (it's completely different in the book), Toby's assistant simply disappeared.





Second, from Carrie's Story by Molly Weatherfield (review forthcoming April 4, along with an interview with the author). This snippet takes place at the pony farm, where Carrie is taking part in pony play training.

"We passed a stall where I could see Mr. Finch's shoulders and the back of his...head and hear his moans. I could also see a chain attached to the stall's back wall, trailing down the wall and onto the ground. The chain was moving rhythmically, and I knew, even though I couldn't see her, that attached to its other end, in the straw on the floor of the stall, was Stephanie on her knees with Mr. Finch in her mouth."

I am forever ruined by Person of Interest - now whenever I encounter a character named Mr. Finch, I will think of Harold. Oh, Mr. Finch, you have been very naughty indeed.

But not quite as naughty as Carrie. Her current relationship has introduced her to a whole new repertoire of sexual moves - although nothing as magical as Toby's wizard moves.