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#BookReview Magician and Fool by Susan Wands

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Magician and FoolAbout the Book

Pamela Colman Smith begins her career as an artist at the end of the Victorian Age at the Lyceum Theatre where she grows from innocent empath to seer and channeller, creating her now world-famous deck of tarot cards.

Introduced to The Golden Dawn cult by Bram Stoker, the second in command at the Lyceum Theatre, she is commissioned to create a tarot deck for the members to use in their quest for magic. Golden Dawn’s most evil member, Aleister Crowley, becomes obsessed with unlocking the mysteries of the Tarot. His obsession peaks when he sees the power of her deck and realizes he can create a rival deck, leading him to manifest magical power to harm Pamela’s incarnates of her cards.

Format: ebook (348 pages)                 Publisher: i2i Publishing
Publication date: 4th October 2017 Genre: Historical fiction, occult

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My Review

I confess I’d never heard of Pamela Colman Smith before being approached by the author to read and review Magician and Fool. Unlike the author, I have very little knowledge of tarot or interest in the occult. Therefore some of the scenes in the book where strange or supernatural happenings occur rather tested my sense of disbelief and the references to incarnates and the like left me a little perplexed.

From an early age, Pamela shows remarkable artistic ability. She also has visions and an unusual response to music and colours akin to synesthesia. Her belief in the supernatural is boosted by her youth spent in Jamaica and the obeah stories told to her by her nurse.

If the occult elements of the book left me slightly cold, what I did enjoy was the evocative depiction of the theatre of the period and the detours into the lives of figures such as Bram Stoker, Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. For example, the scenes at the Lyceum Theatre during the performance of the play, The Corsican Brothers, really sparkled with life. It was also fun spotting the origins of some theatrical phrases and superstitions.

A vast array of well-known figures from the period have walk-on parts in the book, especially when Pamela and Ellen Terry’s daughter, Edy, start hosting artistic soirees. Their guest lists are a who’s who of celebrities of the period – poets, playwrights, authors, musicians and painters – giving rise to memorable exchanges along the lines of “Mr Yeats, have you met Mr Debussy and Mr Whistler?”

The sinister and rather repellent figure of Aleister Crowley brings a darker element to the story. The end of the book leaves the enticing prospect for those intrigued by Pamela’s life of the story continuing in a future book.

My thanks to Susan Wands for my copy of Magician and Fool and her patience in waiting for it to reach the top of my review pile.

In three words: Well-researched, atmospheric, intriguing

Try something similar: Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor

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Susan-headshot-2014-2-768x615About the Author

Susan Wands lives in New York City, where she has worked as a writer, playwright, producer and actor. A practitioner of tarot cards, she has used them as a resource for inspiration and guidance for thirty years. (Photo credit: author website)

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#BookReview Artefacts And Other Stories by Rebecca Burns

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ArtefactsAbout the Book

That dandelion. A flash of stubborn yellow in a dark box of space. It had promised sunshine but had tasted sour.

Artefacts. A dandelion. A mayfly. A family, bereft. Items and mementos of a life, lived hard and with love, or long, empty, bitter.

In these sharply drawn and unflinching short stories, Rebecca Burns unpicks the connection between the lives we live and what we leave behind.

Format: ebook (154 pages)                         Publisher: Odyssey Books
Publication date: 30th September 2017 Genre: Short stories, literary fiction

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My Review

All the stories in the book are well-crafted but, as is often the case with short story collections, some engaged me more than others.

For example, ‘On This Day’ is the unsettling story of a man’s response to the anniversary of past events. In the title story, ‘Artefacts’, a woman senses the emotions of others, even complete strangers. And in ‘The Bread Princess’, bonnets worn over the years by young women taking part in a local custom give insights into social changes.

I also really enjoyed ‘The Last Game – August 1914’ in which a match by the local cricket team, depleted by these who have already joined up, is full of allusions to war. So the cricket pitch becomes the ‘arena of conflict’, the captain swings his bat like a weapon, each man in the team knows his place and his role and, assessing the opposition, the father of one of the players remarks, “This should be over quickly.”

However, the standout story for me was ‘The Greatcoat’ in which a young man returning from the war has conflicting feelings about having to hand back the coat he was issued with. For him, it evokes memories of suffering and loss but also of comradeship and duty. In an example of one of the striking images scattered throughout the collection, he sees the coat lying across a chair in his bedroom. ‘One arm was thrown to the side and it dangled, empty, like a ghost. A dying coat.’

Artefacts and Other Stories is an intriguing collection exploring the feelings, memories and emotions associated with everyday objects. I received a review copy courtesy of the author and Odyssey Books.

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bekki-150x150About the Author

Rebecca Burns is a novelist and short story writer. Her two story collections, Catching the Barramundi (2012) and The Settling Earth (2014), were both longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the UK’s only award for short story collections. Her debut novel, The Bishop’s Girl, was published in 2016. She lives in the Midlands, UK, with her husband and young family. (Photo credit: author website)

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