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Review by Roger Miller
In "The Magician's Wife," Brian Moore probes once again the moral shortcomings of France as he did in his last novel, "The Statement," published in 1996. That novel, a thriller that examined the collaboration of the Vichy government during World War II and the persistent virus of French anti-Semitism, was based on the life of a real person, a war criminal named Paul Touvier.
"The Magician's Wife," according to the publisher's publicity material, is also based on a real situation. It also finds a lot not to like about France, even more baldly than did "The Statement." For this reason -- sometimes it seems that the author has set up straw men and scenes for dramatic effect -- I find it slightly less compelling than "The Statement," but we're dealing here in degrees of excellence.
It is 1856 and Emmeline Lambert has been invited, with her husband, Henri Lambert, to spend a week at the country lodgings of Emperor Napoleon III. Henri, as the pre-eminent magician in France, is comfortable in such grand surroundings, but Emmeline is not, and she only reluctantly agrees to accompany him.
It turns out that Henri has been invited not simply to provide another bit of amusement or distraction that will help the nobility and aristocracy, in Emmeline's words, "get . . . through the boredom, snobbery, and indifference of their lives." The emperor wants to send Henri to Algeria to bamboozle the sheiks and their followers with his illusionist tricks and thus counter the appeal of a beloved marabout, Bou-Aziz, who, it is feared, may be about to call for a jihad against the French conquerors.
At this weeklong soiree we catch, through Emmeline's eyes, hints of the rot in French imperial culture. There is a shooting party at which thousands of birds are pointlessly slaughtered, which sickens her. And there is the emperor with his punctilious and unctuous ways, "his lecher's eyes appraising her, his covetous, faintly mocking smile," which evoke a similar response.
The agent of the emperor's schemes is a Colonel Deniau, a darkly romantic figure whose plotting to subdue the Algerians has not prevented him from adopting their exotic lifestyle as his own. Emmeline, whose relationship with Henri is formal and distant, is attracted to Deniau and she tells herself she would not resist any advances he might make -- until she realizes that his seduction is, like everything else he does, merely another means to advance his imperial plans.
"Deniau is the magician," she thinks. "We are his marionettes." Henri, nevertheless, is the magician, and he puts on two shows that mystify and frighten the Algerians. Some regard him as a great European marabout, others as Chitan -- Satan. The first goes off without a hitch, while the other goes awry and puts his life in danger.
Emmeline's opposition to what France is doing to Algeria grows ever deeper. "These people are not my enemies," she tells herself. A military doctor tells her, "Sometimes I think this country is accursed," to which she replies, "No. It's we who are accursed." More than once she compares Frenchmen unfavorably with Algerians -- Henri and Deniau with Bou-Aziz -- and French leaders with the Algerian. More than once she admires the fierceness of the Muslim's faith.
"Never in France, in cathedral, convent, or cloister, had she felt the intensity of belief everywhere present in the towns, villages, farms, and deserts of this land. It was a force at once inspiring and terrible . . . "
Yet it's not a world she wants to inhabit herself. Emmeline's analysis has more of a 20th-century than a 19th-century ring to it: "Their faith was not more spiritual than Christianity, but it was stronger, frightening in its intensity, with a certitude that Christianity no longer possessed."
In the end, "The Magician's Wife" is also, like "The Statement," a study in personal morality. Napoleon III and Deniau are, because of their important roles, reprehensible on a grand scale.
But poor Henri: Why did he subordinate everything to currying favor with these colonialist rats? Why did he let his faithful servant of 20 years die miserably alone while he did his tricks to assist his masters in their goal of conquest?
The ending is twentieth century ambiguous, so it's impossible to say for sure. But we can hazard a guess about a message, which, in twentieth-century terms, might read: Character counts. All those personal moralities add up to the national one.
Roger Miller is a freelance writer in Lopez, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at roger_miller@bookpage.com.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.