The Prestige, Christopher Priest

The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Published in 1995, I just read this book for the first time in 2015. The novel was added as a mandatory selection to a summer reading program at my school, and I wanted to be more familiar with it as students came into the library to check out copies.
The novel tells the tale of two great magicians at the turn of the 20th century, Alfred Borden and Rupert Angier. Told from the points of view of both men, as well as one of their descendants, we see how a simple, prideful mistake creates a feud that impacts generations. The book's title references the result of a magic trick, and takes on a more significant meaning deeper into the novel. Priest's descriptive writing helps set the stage at theatres in the U.K. (primarily around London) in the late 1800s and early 1900s, in an era just before electricity and in the heyday of great magicians. We see both Borden and Angier discover a talent for magic, and watch as their careers ebb and flow. Yet the rivalry between the two men, as well as the depths to which they'll go to get at the other, continues to grow even at the peak of their success.

The story begins decades later, when a young relative who's never heard of either magician is invited to a strange location for what he believes to be information on a newspaper article he's writing. Instead, he gets clues into his ancestry, as well as something that hints at why he's always had the improbable impression he has a twin somewhere in the world. The journals that he receives contain the bulk of the manuscript of the novel; thus, the book is essentially told in an epistolary format.

The novel reads easily and the shift in narrators, from the journalist to Borden to Angier and between, allows the reader to easily see the different points of view of similar events. The behind-the-scenes look at magic tricks is intriguing and helps move the larger storyline of the jealousy and competition of the two men along briskly.  The mystery behind what has happened and the legacy that was left behind isn't hard to guess; Priest leaves plenty of bread crumbs throughout the book to lead the reader to the big reveal. In fact, the end was rather disappointing after the long buildup -- much like seeing a magic trick that's supposed to be astounding but falls apart because the audience knows exactly how the illusion is created it plays out exactly as scripted. Perhaps the big reveal at the end is most disappointing because throughout the book we see the magicians perform so many tricks that amaze and delight the audience that as a reader we're hoping the author will amaze and delight us.

Overall, this is an interesting look into vaudeville-era magic that could use a good magic trick of its own to help with a disappointing finish. After finishing the novel I discovered that there was a 2006 movie made from the novel, which I saw sometime after it came out on DVD. I didn't put the two stories together while reading it; my guess is that novelist Christopher Priest didn't much like how director Christopher Nolan adapted the novel for the screen.