perform your good deed for the day

Go buy Stephen Policoff's novel Beautiful Somewhere Else, and chalk one up for the writer who's been screwed around nigh unto insanity.

See:
Salon review;
"The Polite Screed of a Publishing Cliche" by Stephen Policoff (at The Elegant Variation);
and Stephen Policoff's interview with himself about the book at Tingle Alley on Monday.

I knew ever since I read the Salon review I wouldn't be able to resist (magicians!) this book, and was actually shocked I hadn't heard of it before. I've been reading Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer as my nonfiction book of the moment, an excellent examination of magic as an art and the larger-than-life personalities in its history. I've read quite a few (read: junkie for this stuff) histories of magic and/or specific parts of the scene and this is one of the best. So, I'm all hyped for an excellent novel with magic in it.

Here's Beautiful Somewhere Else's description from Amazon:

Ever since he was an aspiring teen magician, thirty-eight-year-old Paul Brickner has been obsessed with the enigmatic Sung Soo. Known as the "Wondrous Chinese Wizard," Sung Soo was a famous con artist who taught Houdini many of his famous illusions. Paul has long since abandoned his magician aspirations but not his Sung Soo Project, which has taken many different forms over the years. Paul has been performing his own personal vanishing act for much of his adult life, trying to escape his own anxieties, responsibilities, fears, commitments, and the guilt he feels about the tragic ending of his second marriage. But things have been a little different since he met Nadia, nearly twenty years his junior and a gentle and lovely foil to Paul's profound negativity. Shortly after arriving on Cape Cod for vacation, Paul and Nadia are joined by two old friends and one troubled ex-boyfriend. When a hurricane makes landfall and knocks out the electricity, everyone drinks a little too much, and things start getting very strange, and somehow serve to bring Paul and Nadia closer together. Funny, moving, and compellingly supernatural, award-winning writer Stephen Policoff's Beautiful Somewhere Else is a mesmerizing debut novel.

How can you resist, unless you're a cold-blooded, heartless fool?

worm "10 Miles to Go on a 9 Mile Road," Jim White

namecheck Glen David "Other Great Magic Book" Gold