The Magician's Lie

By: Greer Macallister / Narrated By: Julia Whelan, Nick Podehl

Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins

Emotional and slooooowly developing story turns into a sweet sob-fest…!

Okay so, like, my sister pointed out from NOW ON I shoooould be saying that I DOOOO read the Publisher’s Summaries to ALL my audiobooks ALL the time as I’m forever spouting that I don’t when I really do. And for the life of me, I must agree.

-However-

Once upon a time, I didn’t. Cuz you see, the best stories are the ones that are complete surprises, ones where I had NO clue as to what was happening until things unfolded, one layer at a time. Usually, I’d been compelled to purchase based on the title; more likely? It was the cover that got to me and inspired a hankering for a Listen somewhere down the line.

Which was how I wound up getting The Magician’s Lie back in 2015, and it’s how it came to be such a delight when I listened to it here for my sister’s birthday of 2021. Cuz I did NOT read the Publisher’s Summary! Huzzah to the Golden Age of Not Knowing What The HECK Was Gonna Happen Next!

The story opens turn of the 20th Century with the Amazing Arden contemplating a hellish existence; tonight, she tells us, she’ll get rid of her torturer. Then she goes into her act where a man is to be sawed in half, but TONIGHT she uses an ax and goes TO TOWN on whacking and hacking and whacking some more. The crowd is shocked, I tell you, until they see the man has come to no harm but is shown, standing tall and upright, DEFinitely not rent asunder and bloodied and all gory-like. Huzzah, the crowd goes wild, jumping to their feet and giving the Amazing Arden a rousing standing ovation.

Move onto the next scene where her husband is found, with tsk tsk, AX wounds, all dead and what, and the ONLY person it can be?

The Amazing Arden makes a run for it, but she can’t get away as off-duty cop/detective Virgil Holt sees a spangly outfit darting (Note to self: When not wishing to be seen? Don’t wear sequins and flashy dresses as they’re eye-catching). He drags her back and uses cuffs, SEVeral of them as no doubt she’s an escape artist also, on her wrists and ankles to bind her to a chair, and he begins her interrogation.

Actually, it begins her story because Amazing Arden starts off when she was but a slip of a girl and was named Ada to let Virgil know exACTly how this night came to pass. She was once innocent and full of hope even tho’ she was desperately unhappy living with a mother who made poor choices that left the two of them deeply indebted to a family. A family that had a sociopathic son who became obsessed with Ada. You see, he fancied himself a magical healer. And you see, Ada has this weird “gift” whereby she can heal herself. The son thought it was his own magic that did this, and found ways of hurting Ada, tormenting, brutalizing her.

Soon Ada can no longer stand it and hotfoots it away in the night, coming to work at the Vanderbilt estate. Here she finds honest work… plus young love with the gardener Clyde. The two, having no prospects as servants, seek new horizons in New York, and it’s there that she discovers Clyde canNOT be trusted, and her heart is broken… this once… and NEVER shall be again.

Discovering that she enjoys being onstage, the applause and adulation make her joyful to find new work with an older woman with a magic act. Soon, things get out of hand and get to be too much, and Ada is given the act. It was kinda neat that this is all written so that these women are a triiiiifle ahead of their time, what with this all being an era when women were sooooo far beneath men; Ada starts crafting her performances to feature women and their awesomeness as well as their beauty. To Ada, soon the Amazing Arden, women WILL rock, and she will NEVER again put herself in the power of a man; no marriage for her, thank you very much.

Until she is verrrrrry much in the power of a man, tormented, brutalized, terrorized, yet again.

There is a back and forth between Ada’s story here and Virgil’s own story there. Virgil is tormented in his own right; he’d been shot earlier, and earlier this day a doctor has told him the bullet still lodged in him is inoperable because of its placement. No, he’ll be in pain, and by the by? It could kill him sooner, later, whenever, if it migrates even an iota and hits his heart or something. As he listens to Arden, Ada, whoEVER, many a thought crosses his mind: Is she lying? And… can she heal him with her magical powers?

Nick Podehl, whom I usually think of only in terms of brilliant Middle Grade fiction/or YA, is stellar yet again here. He’s a taaaaad off as Ada, he makes her a bit snippy and hysterical, but for the most part, stellar with her as well. I doooo wish that the final emotional scene with Ada confessing to the “Lie” were done instead by Julia Whelan, but no, it had to be through Podehl as Virgil is the one who hears it, who assesses, who might judge by it and needs to make the realizations. His Point of View is necessary. It’s just that Julia Whelan is spot-ON as Ada! Knocks it clear outta the park as a girl maturing to womanhood, a dreamer of a girl, dissatisfied who then goes on to wheel and deal with the best of them.

THAT said, however? That Ms. Whelan makes Ada a truly memorable character? Welllll, she makes the menfolk memorable as well, and not in a good way. At first, when she’s doing Ada’s tormentor, I gave the growly tones kinda sorta a pass: Is he not, after all, a sinister character? P’raps all that weird and growly hoarseness comes part and parcel with a sinister dude? But then Clyde is introduced and Wham! same voice. The ONLY way I was able to tolerate this, to NOT chuck m’ phone at the wall, was that author Greer Macallister speCIFically says that his voice “rumbles”… soooo… maaaaybe that weird growl and hoarseness connotes rumbling, I dunno? Very displeased when a female botches a male voice; as displeased as when a male narrator botches an important female voice. Yeh yeh yeh, she’s a veteran performer of audiobooks, has a PLEthora of them to her name and what-all, but nope: Couldn’t do a male voice this go-round to save her, or even MY, life.

Whatever, for the most part, the narration of both performers was enough to keep this all flowing as Macallister slooooowly unfolds Ada’s story, her grand ideas, her desperate fears, and how Virgil travels his own character arc until we get to the Lie at the end. Truly a heartbreaking reason for it, and TOTALLY understandable when all the emotions hit the fan with a sob-worthy ker-SPLAT.

Dunno, but I do believe I enjoyed the evolution of the story within my mind, the not knowing what it was about, the discovery of two likable characters as they listened through their stories, their reasons for their beliefs, their actions.

Kinda to where? I dashed on to The Grammarians… and did NOT even glance at that danged Publisher’s Summary! Huzzah for meeeee!