The Magician's Wife by Brian Moore Bloomsbury, 215pp, £15.99 in UK
The idea of a government recruiting a famous illusionist as a way of preventing a war might provoke more laughter than awed respect. At best such a scam might seem the stuff of a harmless old-style Hollywood romantic epic, at worst, it could be viewed as a major, possibly racist, insult to the opposing side. But Brian Moore's new novel, The Magician's Wife, is no comedy. However bizarre the story may seem, it is approached with a weighty intent which leaves no doubt that Moore has not only written his fifth consecutive political thriller, but that his themes continue to be sin, guilt and morality.
Set in 1856, the novel opens in France, later moving to Algeria on the eve of the French takeover. Emmeline is the isolated young wife of a man whose fame as a magician has not quite satisfied him. Lambert, having retired from foreign tours and moved from Paris to Tours, is now obsessed with inventing exotic gadgets such as the painted mechanical gatekeeper which presides at the entrance of the magician's manor. While he perfects his marionettes in his basement workroom, Emmeline amuses herself by brushing her hair three times daily. "She was not brushing it for him. These days she sometimes wondered if he noticed that she no longer used mascara or rouged her cheeks except on the rare occasions when they went out to dine."
Although the daughter of a provincial doctor, she had experienced a more exciting life in Paris and abroad during the early years of her marriage, which is no doubt making it more difficult for her now to accept her seclusion. Moore's tight, spare prose is as efficient as ever, if slightly stiff and uncharacteristically descriptive - particularly in the vivid desert sequences. He is unusually generous with detailed descriptions of furnishings and objects, and has clearly researched the historical period. There are several recurring images. Indeed, through out the novel there are several instances when Moore's characteristic economy gives way to an unsettling lushness, possibly in an attempt to establish a period atmosphere.
Describing the home which has now become Emmeline's private prison, he writes: "It was, she felt, less a country house than a theatrical museum. There were magic boxes in almost every room, a large puppet theatre in the front hall, its stage electrically lit, and on the walls portraits of magicians from a bygone age and large framed posters of Lambert's command performances before the Queen of England, the Empress of Russia, King Louis Philippe and Emperor Napoleon III." The house is quiet, aside from the chimes and tickings of forty-two clocks. No wonder the childless Emmeline has become "disquieted and disappointed".
Moore rarely wastes words. He chooses to describe the interior of the house, rather than his central characters: they reveal themselves through their actions and comments. True to his belief that a novelist should not climb inside a character's mind, he stands aside. Lambert's first appearance is described in the language of a theatrical event. "As always, coming into a room he made an entrance, now opening his arms as if to embrace her, palms up to show that he had nothing to hide." It is a important description; Lambert moves through the narrative as a puppet driven by his performer's ego.
By way of "a conjouring gesture", he displays an invitation, informing his wife that they are to be the guests of the Emperor at his palace in the country. It seems unlikely; Emmeline is bewildered, aware of her husband's status as an entertainer. She asks: "Why would I be invited? Aristocrats, grand people. They don't want me." Moore never formally describes Emmeline's physical appearance, and her youth and beauty are alluded to only by way of the reactions of other people.
The attentions of a handsome officer bring on sexual fantasies. The slight, graceful Lambert proves to be an undemanding husband, and is given to to wearing a hair net as he sleeps, arms folded over his chest. Aside from the plot, which does occasionally achieve the tension of a thriller, the narrative is driven by the confusions, frustration and increasingly defiant sense of justice which are central to Emmeline's personality.
The action moves from the artificiality of the Emperor's social world, with its calculated hospitality, to Algeria, already of interest to France. Meanwhile, the chameleon-like Colonel, a somewhat sinister charmer, has become important to Emmeline, which she acknowledges with a fulsomeness hardly in keeping with a woman of either her class or her time. While Moore makes no attempt to conceal the reasons for Colonel Deniau's devotion to the magician's wife, of far more interest than this transparent, clumsily ambiguous characterisation is Emmeline's gradual discovery of his true intentions. "She remembered what he had said: `I will fight for France as I have fought for her in the past.' He was not here to help the the Arabs preserve their way of life. He was here to destroy it."
Other events help develop her awareness, her intelligence and decency. Throughout the book, Moore is watching Emmeline, her reactions and responses, and using them as a way of telling the story. His other concern is to offer a study of one woman whose abiding dilemma is her emotional confusion. In this he is only partly successful. Even less convincing is the relationship between her and her truly strange husband, which is often melodramatically, and predictably, handled. Observing him as he sleeps, "his dignity destroyed by the humble hair net which encircled his brow", she experiences her pity turning "to shame for he was also a man who loved her as much as he was capable of love, loved her despite her failure to give him the son he wanted, loved her although he must know she did not love him".
For a young woman who appears so lacking in confidence she is surprisingly undaunted by having to travel by horse across the desert. This is a minor flaw in comparison with her inconsistent emotional behaviour. Ultimately, despite her sense of outrage at the dishonesty of the plot her husband has become part of and her courageous moral stance, Emmeline as a character is asked by Moore to do too much. Yet Brian Moore is a writer deeply concerned with morality, and the final image of the magician echoing his broken marionette confers a dramatic cohesion on a novel which, though lacking artistic conviction, is a powerful statement on the evils of colonialism.