A L Kennedy is a wonderfully challenging author, both in terms of style and plot. This book is surely one of her most challenging.

Blue books are often guides, factual pieces full of information. This is a novel full of illusions. Set in the artificial world of a transatlantic cruise ship, the very setting is designed to seduce the passengers into believing they are interesting cosmopolitan people, not the bored and empty people so many of them are.

Elizabeth Barber knows this world is not for her, but here she is, trapped for the duration. A former illusionist, Elizabeth is highly skilled at both listening and lying..

Kennedy develops her story episodically, moving back and forth in time, focussing now on one protagonist, now on another. There are times when she digresses and addresses the reader directly, musing at times on the nature of writing, of reading, and even of books themselves.

Your book - it's started now, it's touched and opened, held. You could, if you wanted, heft it, wonder if it weighs more than a pigeon, or a plimsoll, or quite probably rather less than a wholemeal loaf. It offers you these possibilities.

And quite naturally, you face it. Your eyes, your lips are turned towards it - all that paleness, all those marks - and you are so close here that if it were a person you might kiss. That might be unavoidable.

Much like an illusionist herself, Kennedy reveals history and motives, seemingly from nowhere. Then you realize, of course, the rabbit was in the hat all along.

How much do we need to be deceived or to deceive ourselves? After all, it's the truth that so often hurts.

This is not a feel good book, but unlike a feel good book it will make you think, and you will remember it. That is Kennedy's huge talent.

This book is all dense, detailed beauty, haunting and haunted, with a twisted narrative that reminds me in some ways of [b:Infinite Jest|6759|Infinite Jest|David Foster Wallace|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1165604485s/6759.jpg|3271542], only with mediums instead of tennis players and a stronger wryly joking voice.

I swear this is probably the best book I'll read all year. ( )

Confusing, sometimes baffling, and requires close attention -- if your mind wanders you will be lost. But it's very well-written, and the window into Elizabeth's mind can be very affecting. And the story it tells is a good one once you piece it together (although I have misgivings about the final twist). ( )

At the library with my kids, I saw this on the New Fiction shelves and had to have it, as I have a very high opinion of Kennedy. And this book won me over with its very first page -- an intimate address to the reader from the book itself (an address that is achingly beautiful when read again after reading the book through to the end.)

It is hard to write much about this book without spoiling anything. Untangling the relationships between and identifying the characters within is sometimes frustrating, but necessary, I believe. Because at least one of the characters is a sometimes con artist. Another is a child of a magician, which is a sort of con as well, isn't it? This book is about magic, real magic and cheap magic, the difference between conning and helping, between intimacy and deduction, guilt and self-flagellation.

It's A.L. Kennedy, so you know there will be darkness, loss, and alienation. This fore-knowledge will not prevent the pain from being staggering when it hits.

Ultimately, it is about our need to lay ourselves bare, for the worst of our shortcomings to be known, so that we can be forgiven.

So that we can be loved.
( )

Confusing, sometimes baffling, and requires close attention -- if your mind wanders you will be lost. But it's very well-written, and the window into Elizabeth's mind can be very affecting. And the story it tells is a good one once you piece it together (although I have misgivings about the final twist). ( )