Christina’s Reviews > The Magician's Assistant > Status Update

'If someone were to have pressed a sheet of glass down over the top of Alliance, Nebraska, in winter, it would have resembled an ant farm. Everything was a tunnel eaten neatly, carefully into the snow. The tunnel of the streets branching into the narrow tunnels of driveways and carved-out sidewalks. The snow banked over cars, lawn furniture, porches, like frozen animal carcasses stored for future need.'

'Decent mothers don't send their sons to some children's prison for being homosexual." Before Parsifal's death, Sabine's mother had always dropped her voice on the word homosexual, but now that she saw it as the source of his persecution, she spoke it clearly; even, Sabine, thought, loudly.'

'The wait at the luggage carousel seemed endless. Bags flipped down the silver chute as the crowd pressed forward, everyone ready to be the next winner. No one ever knew what to say while they waited for their bags. "How was your flight?" Sabine asked.'

'Closing her eyes, she imagined her parents' deaths. She imagined her loneliness taking the shape of boxes and boxes of other people's possessions, a terminal moraine that would keep all she had lost in front of her. She was nailed to this spot, to the exact hour of Parsifal's death. And then what about when she died? ... Who would possibly wonder about Sabine?'