The Confabulist

February 24, 2014
From the author of The Cellist of Sarajevo comes this colorful but hard-to-swallow reimagining of Harry Houdini’s life and death. The book opens with narrator Martin Strauss asserting, “I didn’t just kill Harry Houdini. I killed him twice.” Strauss is Galloway’s fictionalized version of the young man who famously punched the famed illusionist in the stomach at a theater in Montreal in 1926, rupturing Houdini’s appendix, which caused his death two days later. Or did it? The hypothesis that Houdini may have survived is the book’s biggest (and most outrageous) conceit—one that may test readers’ patience and credulity. As Martin pursues the “dead” Houdini while trying to evade conspirators who want him silenced, evocative flashbacks limn Houdini’s rise to stardom, his great illusions, and his crusade to expose mediums and other charlatans. All this is well-trod ground, but what is different is the use Galloway makes of a recent idea in Houdini lore: that he worked for U.S. and British intelligence—“the skills of a magician and the skills of a spy were nearly identical.” Galloway makes this notion somewhat believable, but the basic premise of this stylish but convoluted novel—Houdini’s survival—remains difficult to accept. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

July 28, 2014
“I didn’t just kill Harry Houdini. I killed him twice,” asserts Martin Strauss, the protagonist of Galloway’s latest novel. Strauss suffers from a rare and worsening condition that causes him to produce false memories and that will eventually consume his entire mind. The narrative blends the facts of Houdini’s life into a fictional tale that is filled with fascinating tidbits about the escape artist and that also provides an exhilarating story told from the perspective of a truly unreliable narrator. Culp reads the story with a fantastically hypnotic voice that is low and has a slight rasp to it, which can easily pull in listeners and keep them enthralled throughout the book. He also provides a distinct range of voices for the male characters. His female voices are not as successful, but Culp nevertheless manages to distinguish them from the narrative text and the other characters in each scene. A Riverhead hardcover.