| Title | : | Carter Beats the Devil |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0786886323 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780786886326 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 483 |
| Publication | : | First published September 5, 2001 |
| Awards | : | Guardian First Book Award (2001) |
Carter Beats the Devil Reviews
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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. -
Gold’s book is loosely based on the life of Charles Carter, a real magician. After reading his Wikipedia page, I appreciate that Gold was more than willing to stretch the historical facts for the amusement of the reader.
The book starts off with the death (murder?) of one of the greatest presidents ever, Warren G. Harding, who could give any president a run for their money in the floozie and corruption departments. Carter is somehow implicated.
Boyhood trauma propels Carter into magic and onto the vaudeville stage and eventually, his own traveling magic show. His involvement with Harding enmeshes him in a deadly conspiracy involving secret societies, the government and big business. There are plenty of real life people who also make an appearance throughout the book including, The Marx Brothers, Houdini and Philo Farnsworth (the inventor of TV).
Like any good illusionist worth his salt, Gold is expert at misdirecting the reader with literary sleight of hand. Seeming unrelated and unremarkable doings are used as diversions only to be of consequence later in the book.
Bonus: How to make an elephant disappear! Revealed!!!
Aside from the pulpy, dashing, derring-do, what made this an interesting read were the “I-wish-I-had-said/written-that-passage and Gold’s talent to take an extraordinary story and build it with relatable, ordinary moments.
Recommended for historical fiction fans or anyone interested in literary wizardry.
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A Conversation I had earlier,
Friend: "So what are you reading."
Me: "Carter Beats The Devil, it's about a master magician battling a shadowy conglomerate of the government, corporations, and secret societies to find the truth about president Harding's death with the help of his pet lion."
Friend: "... There's no part of that sentence that doesn't appeal to me."
There is a word for this book and it is awesome. A big thank you to Natalie for bringing this to my attention.
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Carter Beats the Devil was set up superbly. I loved the way in which Glen David Gold really brought the early years of Carter alive and how these early childhood experiences influenced the magician he was to become. There was a pretty hefty amount of research undertaken in this project, and Gold really captures the atmosphere of the 1920's, with magicians vying to outdo each-other at every step.
Unfortunately, for me, what followed this impressive start, quickly descended into a confusing tangle of plot lines and characters.I can't help but feel that Gold wasn't sure if he was writing a fictionalised biography or a mystery novel. At times I felt large sections of the narrative suffered from over exposition. For me the story lacked focus, with too much time spend on accessory characters, and not enough on the story of Carter, which was built up superbly in the first section.
To his credit, Gold writes some pretty tense and exciting scenes, but unfortunately he'd lost me well before the impressive finale. For me this story had so much promise, but it was lost on distracting side stories which I found confusing, indulgent and unnecessary. -
It's so rare to have a book that I just can't wait to get back to reading. I always have a book with me (usually several in my car, as noted by certain friends of mine who can't help but comment on the apartment-like state of my vehicle), but then there's the one that leaps to the fore and all the other 'currently reading' titles are consigned, literally, to the back seat. Carter Beats the Devil is fun from the beginning. Gold has a knack for characters and for dialogue, and even the back story is interesting, rather than just poorly drummed-up filler to explain motivations. His pacing is perfect, like that of the showman he writes about. Some of the highest praise I can give is that it made me want to research characters and events to learn more about his source material. Finally, if that's not reason enough to love this story, it has one of the best lines ever uttered in a disagreement between brothers:
"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."
Brilliant. -
"Basically Dan Brown with magicians" is what I wish had been written on the cover, so I would have known not to read this. Based to some degree on the real life of the magician Carter the Great, it also includes (sigh) references to the Illuminati and Skull and Bones, and some fanciful ideas about the last days of President Harding, who was apparently a real guy. It's suggested that Houdini was gay, a claim I can find zero supporting evidence for online. About the only things I trusted were the (weirdly persistent) jokes about Pez.
The whole thing is pretty amateurishly written, and Gold has only the barest control over his plot. The romantic bits are especially wince-worthy; this is a book given to sentences like "It had taken Carter all these tours to realize his most fragile prop was his heart."
Despite all this shittiness, the book rolls along in an adequately entertaining way: it's about fuckin' magic; even the most hapless treatment of magic is bound to be fitfully fun. (Get it? Bound? Oh, forget it.) But the whole thing is really immature, honestly. Immature. -
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. -
A friend gave it to me years ago. I figured eventually I had to read it, like you do. On page 67 I threw it at the wall. It's about magic, which is not very interesting to read about. Or to see for that matter. Magic is very annoying - it's not real you know, it's just a lot of tricks. I like it when they chop a person up and have parts of them in boxes spread around the stage - head there, feet way over there - but that's about it.
Likewise with Harry Potter, every one of which I've seen on the big screen with my daughter. A whole lot of firework displays and running about with a few nice monsters. Give me Lord of the Rings any day, at least that has a story along with the creatures. -
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I started it on a plane to D.C. and couldn't put it down- I stayed up all night when I got there until it was finished. It's historical fiction in the best sense and touches on so many things that fascinate me: the invention of television by Phil T. Farnsworth (see "The Boy Who Invented Television"), the Secret Service (see "Starling of the White House"), turn-of-the-century magicians (see "Houdini!!!," "Hiding the Elephant," and "Kellar's Wonders"), and the history of my hometown, Oakland (see "Oakland: Story of a City"). Full of mystery and adventure as well as historical fact, this is a MUST read.
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Great sprawling blockbuster about battling magicians that goes on too long. I liked it but began irritating me after awhile because it had that "I wanna be a movie!" vibe that also marred "Da Vinci Code" and "Kavalier and Clay". It's like the writer custom made the book for Robert Zemeckis or Barry Sonnenfeld to direct into a big budget movie. Thank God they didn't take the bait.
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This book took me longer than it should have. Partly I guess it was my fault, but partly also the book's. This is not a fast paced read, as I always hope big books to be.
Nevertheless, this is a fun book, with intriguing characters, an unpredictable story, many twists and turns that have you at the edge of your seat. There is a mix of action, character's past unraveling and magical shows.
I really liked the way this book was written, despite it being slow. I liked how so many of the character's were introduced and that you never got more information than you were supposed to have. In this aspect the author really played the role of the magician, never revealing everything to you.
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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. -
This is a thrilling, romantic, fascinating book and will probably be my favorite book read this year. Carter Beats the Devil is a historically fact-based novel about magician Charles Carter who performed in the golden age of magic (1890s thru the 1920s). This story pits Carter against rival magicians and Secret Service agents who suspect Carter had a hand in the death of President Harding. I was drawn in from the get-go. This book is full of suspense, humor, and panache. It came highly recommended from Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer-prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (also an excellent book). Carter Beats the Devil is a richly imagined story full of wonderful characters and it has perhaps the most thrilling, exciting, whiz-bang conclusion I've come across in ages. Great, great book.
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I really liked the first section of this book. The rest of it was a bit of a slog to get through. The writing just seemed a bit unfocused to me. Abandoned at the two thirds mark.
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Vaudeville is back. But don't look to the stage; look to the page. For the second time this month, the curtain is rising on a delightful novel about entertainment before television and movies. First, Elizabeth McCracken played the straight man in "Niagara Falls All Over Again," the story of a Laurel and Hardy comedy team. Now - shazam! - Glen David Gold has revealed "Carter Beats the Devil," an enormous historical novel about an early 20th-century magician.
Although he's since vanished from the cultural memory (poof!), Charles Carter, who billed himself as "Carter the Great," amazed audiences during the same time Harry Houdini was escaping from handcuffs and safes. (The book jacket reproduces a typically garish poster for one of Carter's shows in the 1920s.)
Gold opens his debut novel with the death of President Harding. As the nation mourns, an investigation begins, starting with the magic show he attended the night before his passing. Aides knew their commander in chief was unwell and burdened by a horrible secret, but he had seemed so full of life when he volunteered for one of Carter's grand illusions.
Allowing the president to participate in an act involving fire, guns, knives, cannons, and lions - ending with his dismemberment - seemed like a bad idea to Secret Service agent Jack Griffin. Having accidentally assisted President McKinley's assassin, Griffin is loath to take the rap for another presidential death, but Harding had insisted.
The next day, as the news of his death spreads, Carter disappears, Harding is cremated, and his widow destroys a trove of evidence detailing more scandals than Bill Clinton could deny in eight years. Griffin finds himself battling his own department and a shadowy group of corporate thugs to track down the president's killer and his "horrible secret."
But no sooner do we see these acts of mayhem, magic, and mystery, than Gold whisks us back to Carter's childhood in San Francisco, recreated here in brilliant detail. "From the moment Charles Carter the Fourth first learned it," Gold writes, "magic was not an amusement, but a means of survival." Actually, Carter's struggle was more for identity than survival. His wealthy parents loved him, but had no time for him. Nevertheless, his mother conveyed a smattering of the new Freudian psychology and a large dose of appreciation for melodrama, tools more crucial to the future "Weird Wonderful Wizard" than any wand or rabbit.
Assured that their son will head off to Yale in the fall, his parents send him touring as a Vaudeville magician. While Houdini is making $5,000 a week, Carter is "devoured by fleas, his earnings are regularly stolen, and he returns to California smelling like a smoldering cheroot." Naturally, "he loved every moment of it."
He finally gets a small part in a show led by Colonel Mysterioso, a mustached villain so wonderfully classic that the book seems to shift into jerky black and white whenever he appears. (Keep an eye on his hideous little bald dog, too.) He stares daggers, tortures animals, and treats Carter with utter contempt.
What's worse, he rules over Annabelle, "the most fantastic furious female fighter ever to be tamed." During the show, she takes on a group of angry Indians. "The crowd had never seen a woman who could fight before. They went wild." To Carter, whose "most fragile prop was his heart," she's captivating - but forbidden.
In a gambit to vanquish his foe with a wicked act of humiliation, Carter devises a lavish stage trick called "Blackmail." Naturally, I can't give away the secret (Rule No. 1), but eventually, he beats Mysterioso, weds Annabelle, and enjoys performing with her around the world.
Ah, but keep your eye on Gold's sleight of hand, ladies and gentlemen. When Carter's happiness is cut tragically short by a trick gone awry, he falls into the dark side of his trade, devising morbid, ambiguous illusions that leave audiences more unsettled than amazed.
Nothing can cheer him or save his show until he meets a blind woman named Phoebe, who lives in a home for wayward girls funded by Francis Smith, the Borax millionaire and an early fan of Carter's. This is a sweet romance, drawn with charm and wit. He's distracted by guilt, but a woman who can't see his illusions is the perfect person to perceive the good man he really is.
Too bad their happiness arrives as government and corporate assassins move in to bring the curtain down. Carter finds himself at the center of a scheme to gain control of a magical new technology that will transform the world (and ruin dinnertime). How can he possibly escape from this death-defying ordeal? As a real Carter poster once boasted, stay tuned for "marvels that obfuscate the will, charm the imagination, confound intelligence!"
In the tradition of E.L. Doctorow's "Ragtime," Gold weaves the rich history of this period through his own stagecraft, creating a novel worthy of the hype that announced those great Vaudeville magicians. This was, after all, a time of perpetual gasping at new scientific and consumer miracles. Behold - the X-ray! The vacuum cleaner! Carter and his colleagues levitated along that shifting line between fantasy and reality.
In a book full of conjurers, Gold emerges as the best magician of all, pulling surprises out of his hat throughout this wildly entertaining story, which captures America in a moment of change and wonder. The third and final act alone is worth the price of admission, but I'd rather face the devil himself than reveal any details about that part of the show.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0920/p1... -
Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil is something that's becoming increasingly rare: a novel about magic with no fantasy elements in it. But what makes the book truly remarkable is Gold's ability to make real-world stage magic just as interesting and amazing as the feats performed by that uppity British kid in the big glasses: even when the reader is told how the tricks are done.
The book gives us the tale of Charles Joseph Carter, a real-life magician thrown into a highly fictionalized story involving the (also real but fictionalized) untimely death of President Warren G. Harding. It just so happens that Carter performed a rather morbid trick onstage with the president just hours before he died, and now the FBI considers him a prime suspect in his death. Carter also has to deal with his own fading career, the painful memory of his late wife's tragic death, and a rival magician with a homodical grudge. Throughout it all, he devises an incredible magic show designed to get his career back on track and knock the people of 1920's San Fransisco off their feet.
But what makes the book truly remarkable is Gold's ability to transfer the techniques that make magic so enjoyable unto his own writing style. The entire story relies on Gold's skill at misdirection: the soul of the magician's act, where the audience's attention is drawn in the wrong direction so an illusion can be performed. Time and again Gold gets the reader to think about the wrong person or situation so he can surprise us with an unexpected outcome to a sequence. Somehow this trick never gets old, as Gold, like any good magician, comes up with countless ways of dressing up his tricks so they seem brand new. The book boasts a great mystery and an excellent climax, along with a surprise ending that Gold seemingly pulls from nowhere, like a rabbit from a hat.
Carter is a fine historical adventure novel, but there are a few problems. Carter himself is an excellent and full realized character, but hardly anyone else in the cast approaches his complexity; the FBI agent who persues him comes close, but several other characters are rather flat and one-dimensional, including Carter's love intrests and various backers of his performance. The worst offender is Mysterioso (his real name is never given) the rival magician and the "devil" of the book's title. A Snidley Whiplash style campy bad guy, he abuses animals, demeans his co-workers, murders people (with playing cards!) for no apparent reason, looks down on everyone, attempts rape, and so forth. Mysterioso is a fun bad guy, but that's all he is; he's easily the second most important character in the book but there's nothing whatsoever to his character besides being a jerk. Several of the book's supporting characters suffer similar fates, filling necessary roles which they never come close to breaking out of.
Despite this, Carter himself is more than strong enough a character to carry the book all on his own, and his feats of magic, along with the era in which he lived, come alive vividly. So if you're looking for a story that blends adventure, mystery and some truly diabolical tricks, Carter and Gold have quite a show in store for you. -
I originally decided to read Glen David Gold’s “Carter Beats the Devil” because it was mentioned in another book I was reading—“Little Princes” by Conor Grennan. I also love magicians and magic shows! I was hoping for this book to have the essence of the magical realism genre as is seen in the works of Haruki Murakami. Unfortunately, asides from the general plot I did not get an overwhelming sense of magic imbued in the story.
As for a historical fiction I do believe it captured the essence of the 1920s, but I disliked how the author distorted historical figures and locations for his plot. For example, Gold describes San Francisco’s Orpheum theatre, “The lobby had a million-dollar Tiffany glass barrel-vaulted ceiling depicting peacocks in top hats courting peahens in ball gowns among Elysian fields. The walls were mosaics and frescoes improving on Pompeii’s finest discoveries…” (p.107). Gold describes the theatre beautifully, but only with partial truth. It is correct that the Orpheum theatre had Pompeii inspired decor, but it did not have a Tiffany stained glass ceiling. Others may find small details to be insignificant, but I believe this can lead to misunderstandings of historical places and figures—such as Philo Farnsworth or Borax Smith who are depicted by Gold. I also found it confusing because I would not have known which characters were based upon really people if I had not Google searched them. It would have been nice if he included a short description of the real people at the end of the book.
Overall, I found Gold’s writing to be entertaining. I felt the plot was a bit convoluted, but I was able to follow it well enough and Gold illustrated characters quite well. I would give this book a rating of 3.5 stars. -
The best book I have read in 2018 so far and most likely one of the greatest and most enjoyable books I have ever read. Full review to come on the PolarBearAcademy blog.
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Only 480 pages? I could have sworn it was a least 700 pages. So many characters and subplots! When I was about half way through Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold, I remember scanning through to the end to see if I could make It. I wasn’t bored as much as overwhelmed. I felt like this book would have made a wonderful series of books. There are so many good stories revolving around Carter the Great. Charles Carter was a real magician in the early 1900’s but this story has little to do with the real man. President Harding is an important character in the book as well as the creator of the first BMW and the creator of the first electronic television. All of the characters are extraordinary. You won’t find any “everyday people” in this book. This book had a larger than life feel to it, it’s almost like the author was winking at us saying, “I know these characters are over the top, but isn’t it fun?” - there’s a damsel in distress that doesn’t need our help, a villain with a black cloak and a blood thirsty dog and our magician that truly can get out of any scrape with the tools up his sleeves. It’s fun but very involved. I’ll remember the characters long after I remember what they did.
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A disappointing read, Carter Beats the Devil is both overlong and underwritten. The historical detail just about succeeds in evoking the pre-WWI and interwar years in which the majority of book is set, but the characters, especially Carter himself, are strangely one-dimensional, and the plot is ludicrous, and, ironically, boring. You want books like this to be rip-roaring page-turners, but honestly, for all the supposed "magic" in the book it really wasn't very magical or exciting. I feel like Glen David Gold missed an opportunity to tell a good tale, to really evoke the vaudeville era and it's shabby end, to explore the imagination and wonder of stage magic. Instead, the book is a bland, messy and unsatisfying. Not the worst book I've ever read, but really not very good at all.
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"я просто хотів показати, що деякі фокуси дуже хитрі. аж занадто хитрі. мені, виконавцеві, прикро, коли я щось роблю, а ніхто цього не помічає".
мабуть, у письменницькій роботі теж таке є. коли ти вибудовуєш текст, створюючи фантастичні фігури, а читач потім відмовляється їх бачити, повторюючи несмішний жарт про сині штори. на щастя, письменники не так часто бачать безпосередні читацькі реакції (або їхню відсутність), як фокусники.
але то так, асоціації. книжка ж – захопливий роман про ілюзіоніста, сам наповнений фокусами й ілюзіями. у цій магічній атмосфері і збіги обставин, і передбачувані сюжетні ходи, і жанрові кліше виглядають природно й правильно: адже нам показують магію, в якій усе може скінчитися несподівано, але неодмінно добре. -
Magic, thriller, period - three specific strands and together they make for a great book.
Set in the fictional world of 1920s magic, this references real people, such as Houdini, but the set-up is pure imagination.
Funny, entertaining, nail-biting and genuinely heart-warming, this is one of those books that not that many people have read, but should be recommended to everyone! I love it!
As a footnote, the author is Alice "Lovely Bones" Sebold's husband -
This has been quite pleasant so far, particularly if you like an old-fashioned rambling tale with some fun magic tricks thrown in. The story of Carter here is as if told by a popular writer of, say, the 1930s, which fits the time period (though that is a bit earlier) and the characters (who are drawn pretty broadly). I keep waiting for the mystery to start, since it has the feel of a Golden-Age mystery. But I guess the mystery will be tied in with Harding and before that we have to go along and see what Houdini is like. Stopping at page 200 but leaving the bookmark in, since I feel like I can put this down now and pick it up again and I won’t have forgotten anything crucial. We’ll see.
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I was going to give this 5 stars. But the book was too long. There were stories within it that were captivating but it felt like a series of short stories and I lost focus in the threading together. Maybe it needs to be read quickly in one go. By the last 100 pages I really wanted it finished. The twist was a bit lost on me because I’d grown a little bored. But aside from the length I thought it was a good read. Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.
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Super tightly plotted and a lot of fun.
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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.
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dnf 22%
I enjoyed this book up to where I got to, and since reading the book 'Escaping From Houdini' of the stalking jack the ripper series I have become interested with this magician genre so yeah shows my enjoyment further.
Its just I didn't start this book at the right time as I'm just not bothered to read much currently.
But I will definitely come back to this one day. -
Carter Beats the Devil was one of those novels you hate to see end.
The 2001 work by Glen David Gold is hard to categorize.
Carter Beats the Devil focuses on Charles Carter, a stage magician in 1920s San Francisco facing a career crossroads. Beset by a taunting rival, with the entertainment revolution represented by movies gathering steam, Carter grapples with the need to pull off something amazing to save his career. Flashbacks to earlier points in Carter’s life trace his development from a privileged youth, his discovery of magic and his romantic travails. Along the way, the story intersects with the death of President Warren Harding and the invention of television.
Carter Beats the Devil has an interesting central plot, but it’s not really a plot-driven book. Carter manages to interact with numerous real world personalities on his journey (including Harding, Philo T. Farnsworth, Harry Houdini and the Marx Brothers, among others) and to intersect with real world events. The prospect of career ruination provides the motivating force of the story. But really,
Carter Beats the Devil is about the emotional journey of Charles Carter.
Gold crafted a rather compelling central character. Carter isn’t always easy to like. Indeed, there are points where he’s rather self-involved and careless of those around him. But Gold locates a relatable point of view in this complicated man with a singularly distinctive profession and outlook on the world. Gold’s construction of the world of period revue shows and stage magic is dazzling. The details, the language of that world, the ups and downs, all come vividly to life. And Gold is a master of immersing the reader in the story’s period setting. He incorporates real world events and people not to show off his research, but because they truly enhance the story. It’s a period novel where the period is almost a character in and of itself.
And that, more than anything, may be why
Carter Beats the Devil lingers in my mind so strongly 14 years after I first read it. Gold crafted characters and an atmosphere that were transporting and absorbing. While the plot was interesting enough and provided decent payoff, it is the characters and their world that really pull the reader in. I could have gone on reading about them for many more chapters, enjoying the clear love that Gold had for what he was writing. The language, the details, the effortlessness. When a book is crafted with as much heart as was Carter Beats the Devil, it just radiates through.
Gold hasn’t been prolific. His only other novel was the relatively disappointing
Sunnyside in 2009. That was another period frolic whose many interesting parts never quite came together. One can only hope fans will see another book from him someday.
Until then,
Carter Beats the Devil is highly and enthusiastically recommended.
This review originally appeared on
www.thunderalleybcp.com. -
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.
![[(Sunnyside)] [Author: Glen David Gold] published on](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/nophoto/book/111x148)