The Illusions - Liz Hyder - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Liz Hyder

GENRE: Historical Fiction

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical fiction about magicians and film pioneers in the mid-1890s. Fulfills all the promises made in the blurb. After a long time, I am on a book high.

Story Synopsis:

1896, Bristol.

Cec Marsden: a sixteen-year-old assistant to an old con artist. Cec's life is suddenly upended by the death of her master, and she is convinced that she is to blame. After all, she seems to have some hidden power that she doesn’t understand and can’t control.

Eadie Carleton: After her father’s death and her brother’s disappearance, Eadie, who is in her mid-twenties, is left in charge of the family photographic studio. But Eadie is an inventor at heart, and is desperate for the world to recognise her talent with motion pictures. But is the society willing to accept a woman inventor with no man standing beside her?

George Perris: A twenty-six-year-old magician who has the talent but not the finances to establish himself. When he sees ‘living pictures’, he is convinced that they have potential, and that he can merge his magic with the new medium for greater success.

Valentin: aka The Great Valentine, who has not been to England since ages after a rift with his friend and fellow-magician, knows that it is time for him to return to Bristol and set things right. However, Bristol has other things in store for him, and he soon finds himself in charge of a youngster and a show, both of which hold their distinct challenges.

The lives of these four characters are set to cross in ways that create magic - actual and illusory, on and off the stage.

The story comes to us in the limited third-person perspective of the above four characters.

I had read Liz Hyder’s ‘The Gifts’ just a couple of months back and was blown away by her imagination. Despite some issues, it is still among my most memorable reads of this year so far. ‘The Illusions’ not just recreated the magic of the earlier book, but also blew away most of the complaints I had then.

Bookish Yays:

✨ The magic and illusions. So interesting and so authentic to the era! I loved everything connected to magic, right from the behind-the-scene glimpses to the showmanship on stage to the actual magic that some characters were capable of. This might remind you of ‘The Prestige’, but the only common factor between the two books is the magical theme.

✨ The spotlight on ‘living pictures’ – how astounding the medium of film and moving images must have seemed to the general public who were used only to still photographs! Films are a kind of magic, but we today are so saturated with moving media that we fail to remember the magic behind them. This book made me fall in love with the concept all over again. (This doesn’t mean that I now like Insta reels or Tiktok. No, siree!)

✨ All of the main characters are well-defined. Some are entirely good of heart and some entirely rotten, but the rest have enough depth to make them feel realistic. What I especially loved is that the characters act their age. Cec is an impulsive teen who, having never seen comfort or security in her young life, gets manipulated easily by others and sometimes, even by her own feelings. Valentin uses his seniority and his experience to lead the rest. George is a young man with the light-heartedness of youth intermingled with the pressure of having a successful career. And Eadie allows her past heartbreaks to guide her heart but not her head and its brilliant inventive capacity. All of them felt genuine. And all of them won my heart.

✨ I love the role of women characters in this story. Historical fiction rarely allows common women to take a strong role in society, so to see the likes of Eadie, Cec, and Harry follow their passions despite the restrictions thrown on them by the 1890s society was awesome.

✨ Though there are quite a few characters in the story, the characterisation is such that it is fairly easy to remember them without any confusion. Must give credit to the author for handling so many story tracks without losing control of any. Every arc and every main third-person narrator gets equal prominence.

✨ Don't you just love a good old slow-burn romance without mention of flitters in the stomach and flutters in the heart? (Oh, you don’t? But I do! 😁) I hate insta-love stories, so to see two of the characters come together in an organically growing relationship was enough to make me remember my youthful days when I devoured classic books and the romantic tracks therein. (David Copperfield and Anne; Phileas Fogg and Aouda; Jo March and Prof. Bhaer – Uff!! 😍) Give me more such fictional romances any day!

✨ The found family trope is put to excellent use through the writing. At the same time, the book also highlights how easy it is to manipulate someone based on what they assume than on what is true.

✨ Though the pacing is somewhat on the slower side (as is typical for character-oriented stories), I never felt that the book dragged at any point. As a reader, I was invested in the content from start to end without any feelings of boredom.

✨ The ending! Le satisfied sigh! 😍😍

✨ Gotta love a great author’s note that highlights the real-life inspiration behind the fictional characters and the historical relevance and accuracy of the story. Don’t skip it!

Bookish If Onlys:

⚠ There is a minor thread of magical realism in the plot. However, this is not explored much and not explained at all. Of course, the book isn’t promoted as a magical realism novel, so I am not counting this as an example of misleading marketing. But a teeny part of me wishes that the magical realism aspects had been a bit more prominent.

⚠ Teensy-weensy complaint: At times, it was confusing to recollect that Harry stood for Harriet. I know it’s a valid short version of the name, but while reading, Harry first brings to mind a male character. In a book with too many characters, this is a hurdle.

After a long time, I experienced a fascinating book that made me read almost obsessively till the wee hours of the morning, without caring that I had to wake up early. This was 450 pages of bookish thrills. To be fair, it wasn’t a perfect read: one character should have been darker and one theme should have been explored more, but the flaws are so minuscule that I am happy to ignore them.

That said, I know this book won’t work for everyone. The book is written in pseudo-literary fiction style, so the proceedings are slow-paced and character-focussed. But to the reader who cares more about storyline and characters and imagination than about pace, I think this will be a treat.

Strongly recommended to all those fed up of plain old historical fiction and love a dash of magic in their reads. Liz Hyder will be on my must-read author list from now on.

4.5 stars. (I was torn between a 4.25 and a 4.5, but a book hangover and an imaginative fact-fiction medley earned it a higher rating and a happy rounding-up wherever needed.)

My thanks to Bonnier Books UK, Manilla Press, and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Illusions”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.