Magic

The trope of a ventriloquist falling under the spell of his own alter-ego in the persona of his dummy is an old one. Goldman, however, shows a remarkable gift for re-imaging the plot in a novel wherein he uses a multitude of varying points of view and unreliable narrators to weave a web of kaleidoscopic psychological horror where nothing is necessarily what it seems and the central character’s alcoholism and possible descent into madness serve to reinforce the novel’s complexity.