4.5 taking off half a star for some whack plot stuff but omg i loved this book charles carter u are my baby girl and i love u and your gf, gay brother, his football player boyfriend, and pet elephant and lion

I don't know if I hate or love this book since it is so off-the-wall. I picked it up at a book sale since the cover is very eye-catching but had no idea what it was about. I soon learned that it dealt with the death of President Warren Harding, the rise of the magician, Carter the Great (who was actually a real person), the discovery of television, Houdini, the Secret Service, the Illuminati, and a pet lion!! Mix all those things together and there you have it.....off-the-wall.

Basically it is a fictional semi-biography of Carter the Great, who is told a secret by President Harding that the President thinks will be disastrous to the US and the world. Soon the Secret Service is following Carter as they suspect that he murdered Harding because of this secret. Then the story goes off in a million different directions with sub-plot piled upon sub-plot. The story, which is certainly somewhat fragmented, pulls you in against your will. I kept thinking "this is stupid" and then couldn't wait to turn to the next page, so I guess I loved it after all. I'll say this......it is different but is a fun read and in the end you will find out something about Warren Harding and his death that you didn't know!!! Remember, this is fiction.

I can't think of a single bad thing to say about this book.

Things started off really well with this book and then my reading dropped off a bit of a cliff. While the intrigue level didn't keep me glued to my seat, the plot was interesting enough that I knew I wanted to come back and finish it. I rarely read historical fiction, so it was fun to read something from the early 20th century with a magic twist.

Notable quote: "Since all animals are brothers under the skin, we must treat our beats like we do our friends"

Other reviews here go into the details of this wonderful novel, so if that's what you want, go read them. I'll just tell you what I knew before I went into it, which was pretty much nothing.

My friend Yuri gave me this book about 5 years ago. I was intimidated by its length, so I put it on the shelf and never opened it. Then, last year, my friend Ben gave it to me with a few other books for my 40th birthday, part of a collection he said were some of the best books he'd ever read.

Anne and I took a Secret Vacation, and I wanted something to read, so I brought this with me. It was long enough to last a week, and was an actual book, so it wouldn't be a big deal if it got wet or sandy or vacationed on.

I started it on the airplane before we took off, and read it for almost 6 straight hours. Then, I read it about 100 pages per day until I finished it this afternoon. Total days reading it? Five or six.

All I knew going into it was that two people who I respect were crazy about it, and that it was historical fiction about a great magician, so that's all I'm going to give you. I will tell you that I loved it, loved every word and every page and every single thing about it I am so glad I read it, and wish I could read it all over again for the first time.

Pick up a copy -- I strongly recommend the dead tree version -- and read it for about 20 pages. I'm pretty sure you'll be on board by then, and if you're not, maybe it just isn't for you ... but I suspect you'll love it as much as I did.

This book is so good! Read in 3 parts, and each detail building on each other in a beautiful web of intricacy and drama. I really loved it.

It's obvious this is a first-time book for this writer. The plot meanders here and there, characters come and go with no real purpose. Romances fizzle out, opportunities for intense and exciting plot lines aren't acted upon... I just found it such a slog. I gave it my best shot to read this book before our book club meeting, but gosh I just had to give up around page 400. I know others who thoroughly enjoy this read, so I certainly think I'm in the minority but it just went on and ON. Many key points were so subtle I almost missed them - I won't ruin it by saying what exactly. I like books to be speeding trains, occasionally slowing to pick up new people along the way but with clear direction of where they're going. This book was like a pedalo drunkenly stumbling around on a lake, not knowing where to go and doing it slowly.

2021 re-read

This re-read was prompted mostly by desire to reaffirm my lingering love for the story. I remember reading it all those years ago, and remembered loving everything about Carter and his machinations. I just wasn't sure if my feelings for the book would hold to this day. And, after blowing through this re-read (in two days, no less!), I can emphatically say that yes, this story deserves all the love and holds up to my 11 year-old feelings for it. It's fun and clever and a tiny bit confusing at times, but really well done.

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While this story wasn't about the type of magic that I'm usually drawn to (where witches and wizards rule, where incantations can tear the fabric of reality, where wands are instruments of thought), it was still magic, and it still had me captivated from the second that Carter started his campaign to beat the Devil. I found myself smiling and slightly in awe by just the descriptions of Carter's final act...and wishing there was some way that I could have witnessed that show in person.

There are so many thoughts bouncing through my head right now. That I loved Charles Carter and was fiercely devoted to him, his plans and his shows. That I was surprised that James grew on me, growing from the snot-nosed little brother to be a true friend to Carter, smart and business-savvy and respected, and throwing out the single most hilarious line:

Oh, dear God, you don't actually have a brain, do you, it's more a filigreed spiderweb, with little chambers in it where trained monkeys play the pipe organ.

My thoughts continue: I love historical fiction, especially when it's done so well. And this, this was done SO well. You have the history of San Francisco, a city I adore, as well as Oakland, struggling to compete with San Francisco even then. You have the peak of on-stage magic, the intrigue of President Harding's untimely demise, the Secret Service, shunned and angry ex-magicians, millionaires, female convicts and the invention of something we take for granted.

I'm actually sad that the book is over. I fell in love with Carter - not only for his talent, but for his soul. I know, that's such a camp thing to say, but it's true. He was such a kind, mostly innocent person, who above all else, wanted to entertain people, and share his sense of wonder with the masses. His nemeses (nemesis? nemesises? nemesees?) were from different worlds, and pursued him for different reasons, but their tenacity and reasons for hounding Carter were real, if shaky, and entirely absorbing.

Honestly, when I started this journey, I had no idea where it would take me. The transitions from the death of President Harding to Carter's past to Carter's present to Carter's (at the time of the first chapter) future were seamless and excellently executed. The final...ehm..."battle" (for lack of a better word) between Carter and the two who dogged him was exhilarating and scared the bejeesus out of me with all the twists, turns and changes in dominance.

Magic draws me in, no matter the form. The history in Carter's story (indeed, the romanticized versions of Carter, Houdini and the Harding’s) were able to delight and intrigue me, and made truly sad to see the end.

I'm really turned off by magic and I thought this was rather boring. I only read the first third.

Spectacularly entertaining. This big, fun, warm-hearted novel tells the story of Carter the Great, a stage magician in the 1920s. The author piles on lots of historical details and fun cameos by real figures, but he also supplies a whizbang plot full of twists, turns, narrow escapes, and not one but three wonderful love stories. I never wanted this book to end.

I've learnt about this book from this discussion:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
and I love vintage magic posters, which means I also loved this cover, - and these are the two reasons for my reading it ;)
And, of course, it is a bit of a stretch to compare it to Susanna Clarke's novel, so I won't be doing it.

I was kind of disappointed with the beginning: the death of a President and its possible investigation didn't much interest me. Then I fell in love with Carter's story, and by the end of the 'first act', I was in love with the book. I loved the slight weirdness of the characters, the irony, and the dreamy mood of the story.
By the final 'act', though, it became a grotesque action-adventure thriller, which, actually, I didn't enjoy that much, although this must make the book more page-turner-ish; indeed, readers mustn't complain the book is too fast-paced for them, must we? But this is what I felt: 'Oh, please, don't make me worry so much, everything is happening so quickly I don't get enough time to think about how all of this is written'.

That said, this has been a very interesting read. I do recommend it to family and friends.
I liked it that the book is generally animal-friendly, although there is one very dubious scene in the end where an animal actually gets hurt.

I originally read this book in 2004, right after Kavalier and Clay. Which did not bode well for it. Both books deal with magic and early 20th century entertainment, but Carter suffered from some plot contrivances and general hokiness that made it pale in comparison to Chabon's novel. Not to mention Kavalier and Clay is a "serious" novel with lots of brooding and metaphors while Carter is much more lighthearted and wistful. Which, now that I've read it again, I really don't see as a fault.
The novel is a thoroughly researched story about magic in the first three decades of the 20th century. Most of its characters are drawn directly from real life, such as Houdini, Warren G. Harding, and even Carter himself. I decided to reread it after I had some free time and decided to look over my favorite scene, when Houdini embarrasses a fellow magician onstage by sabotaging his escape tricks. Immediately I was drawn back in and within a week I had reread the entire novel.
All of this is a testament to the richly detailed environment Gold creates through his endless research. By the end, the novel has touched on not only the cultural intricacies of magic, but also engineering, finance, law enforcement, and San Francisco in general. Small throwaway details, such as the food one character gets for lunch, the types of shoes someone wears, or the design of Carter's posters, establish such a thorough world that it's easy to forgive the aforementioned contrivances.
A truly engaging novel, and one that's made me incredibly excited to read Gold's latest. All I know about it is that, in the first chapter, Charlie Chaplin somehow appears in hundreds of places across the country simultaneously. Intriguing...