Book review: The Confabulist

There's nothing quite like an unreliable narrator to add intrigue to a novel. Martin Strauss is suffering from a rare brain disease that is affecting his memory and that causes him to confabulate - to create, quite unconsciously - stories to fill the blanks where memories have disappeared. That means the recollections he is offering us may be the truth, the partial truth, or nothing like the truth.

Much of what Strauss remembers is of the life of Harry Houdini, a magician and escape artist who was for a while considered the most famous man in the world. Strauss' own path seems to have cut across Houdini's at critical moments in the past: indeed, Strauss believes he has been responsible for Houdini's death, not once but twice.

On the first occasion, acting on an impulse he didn't understand then and has failed to understand since, he punched Houdini (whom he didn't personally know) in the stomach. This caused the burst appendix and the peritonitis of which Houdini died a few days later. Strauss fled the scene and abandoned his girlfriend. He lived the rest of his life on the run - or so he recalls.

Strauss' story is interwoven with that of Houdini, something resembling the real story of his rise to the giddiest heights of fame; from the son of Hungarian immigrants through his incomparable skill as an illusionist, together with an overgloss of speculation on the author's part. Galloway's Houdini, quite plausibly, had a secret life doing occasional intelligence work for the US and British Governments in the maelstrom of political cross-currents and undercurrents leading up to World War I.

The narrative purports to be Martin's apology and explanation (while he still has most of his faculties) to a young woman whom he believes to be Houdini's daughter. But of course, there's every reason to doubt not only the story, but also his notion of who Alice is.

This is a cleverly constructed novel, hard to put down, and just as hard to forget. It's a fascinating meditation on identity and memory and the line between illusion and reality that keeps haunting you, even when you think you know how the trick has been done.

The Confabulist
by Steven Galloway
(Text Publishing $37)