Andrew Westley has believed all his life that he has a twin brother, but with no proof that one ever existed.
Kate Angier saw a dreadful event in the basement of her family home when she a little girl. To rid herself of the torment of what she witnessed all those years ago she traces and contacts Andrew.
Andrew is adopted, his birth name was Nicholas and his natural great grandfather was the illusionist Alfred Borden, Kate’s great grandfather was the aristocrat Lord Caldlow also known as Danton, the illusionist Rupert Angier.
What did happen the night when a young Nicholas visited the Angier family home only to be murdered in front of Kate and his natural father?
And so begins the story of two feuding magicians, the after effects still being felt by their descendants almost 100 years later.
The main story is told via journals by the two illusionists, therefore you are reading the outcome of some events twice from different perspectives. Alfred Borden writes that he is bound by the Pact of Acquiescence even when writing ‘the truth’ in his journal, therefore we are not be entirely sure that what we are reading is actually what happened. Certain events can only be confirmed by the subsequent reading of Angier’s journal.
Not quite horror, a science fiction novel of sorts with Tesla as a mad scientist. I didn’t want to put it down as I had to know the outcome of Andrew’s search for his ‘twin’, however the ending which was very eerily constructed failed to deliver.
Born in 1943 Christopher Priest is heavily influenced by the works of HG Wells and in 2006 was appointed as Vice-President of the international HG Wells Society. Many of his novels explore the themes of unrealiable narrators and the nature of memory and reality.
The Prestige has recently been released as a movie with a screenplay by Jonathon and Christopher Nolan, but is very different from the Novel, and a ‘tie-in’ book is yet to be released.
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