'Carter Beats the Devil' stumps many readers

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

If you still felt mystified about a circumstance or two in Glen David Gold's "Carter Beats the Devil" after reading the latest Advertiser Book Club selection, you're not alone.

Megan Smith, left, Mary Ann Robnett, Laura Carr and Eleanor Ha all were readers of Glen David Gold's "Carter Beats the Devil." Many of them enjoyed the book but found its intricately-woven plot confusing. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

In the book, Carter involves President Warren G. Harding in a magic trick on the day before Harding dies mysteriously. Carter becomes a suspect, and in the process, opens his life to the reader.

During our reading period, we challenged readers to solve the mystery of a Braille motto printed on the cover of the paperback edition. (The Braille says "She Never Died," and it resolves an open question from the novel — did an abused woman who destroys her home to escape her tormentor die in the blaze?) But even after reading the book twice, I completely forgot a subplot that contained a vital clue to the mystery.

At a meeting of a Kailua book club that I attended a few weeks back, one woman couldn't figure out who a certain old lady is who pops up at the end of the book. When I shared this with Gold, he e-mailed back, "Your friend at the book club is not alone."

Gold told me: "Someone who should have known better (someone who should REALLY have known better) asked who the old guy on the island was." Both the old lady and the old guy are key to resolving a mystery that's a central question of "Carter Beats the Devil."

But this book had many mysteries and many subplots, so many characters and so much action that it's no wonder some folks felt like weavers with too many colors of yarn between their fingers — let one slip and it was lost forever.

"There was so much action that it was hard to remember it all," said book club member Eleanor Ha.

Actually, book club participants appear to have fallen into three camps on this, as did the folks in Kailua: A number took one look at the book's 480-page length and decided they didn't have time to even start it.

Finally, there were a fair number who enjoyed the book, but who were either confused by it, or disappointed.

I talked about "Carter Beats the Devil" with a Kailua book club associated with the American Association of University Women that has been meeting for 37 years. There, a number of members thought that Carter hadn't quite succeeded at the thing he earlier told us in an interview was most important to him: making the women in the book, particularly Carter's love interest, Phoebe Kyle, come alive.

"I wish his role with the women had been developed more" said Megan Smith, who wanted to know more about Phoebe and about Carter's first wife, and how that marriage had come about.

"Yes, but do you realize that would have made the book longer?" asked Doris Huddleston, to general laughter.

Several club members were taken up with Carter's family life and how that affected him in later life: He seemed to them to be still looking for the love, stability, understanding and support that he never got from his distant parents.

"I felt it was really autobiographical — the mother going off to New York for years for therapy," said Ha.

"That was one of the most painful parts of the book for me," said Smith, referring to the segment of the book that tells of Carter's childhood.

At one point, Carter and his little brother are abandoned by all their caretakers — each of whom think the other is with the children. They are physically abused by an ill-tempered gardener and then, in a textbook case of insult to injury, their complaints are not taken seriously when their father returns. "It kind of helped his desire to perform. He really longed for that kind of attention, someone who would watch him and believe in him," said Smith.

The club members predictably spent a lot of time speculating about where fact ended and fiction began. What did happen and what did not?

This is a question Gold declines to answer because, he says, if he says it's real, the reader wishes it were made up, and vice versa. But the book club did wander momentarily off into a hilarious discussion as to whether wearing a red tie, as Houdini does in the book, was or was not a secret sign between homosexuals.

The character of Carter was a problem for some readers, a draw for others.

Alma McGoldrick said she couldn't seem to connect with Carter: "He was almost an illusion to me."

But Nancy Pinkosh thought Carter was a sympathetic character: "He tried to do good for everyone one met."

"I thought his life was like a performance," countered Mary Ann Knerr. "I didn't think his character had any real depth."

"I found his disillusionment with himself very sad," said Alta Bento.

Smith and others in the club pondered the book's title a bit — what's it supposed to mean, or is it just the title of the trick in which Carter beats Satan at poker?

Joanne Flannery noted that "beats the devil" is an old but common phrase, as in, "Now doesn't that just beat all?" or "Doesn't that just beat the devil?" But Huddleston found the mention of the devil off-putting.

Pinkosh, who grew up in California, complimented Gold's handling of the setting in Oakland and around the Bay Area. "I could just see it."

This appealed to reader Geoffrey Kragen, who e-mailed, "I'm a third-generation San Franciscan. This means that Gold had my attention even before I opened the book. Having said that, this book is a fun read. I always enjoy well written period pieces that mix fiction with historical characters. And having grown up with a fascination for magic this was the best of all worlds."

Kragen was also appreciative of a book that leaned a bit more toward male interests and was more of a pure work of entertainment than some previous book club selections.

"The above doesn't mean the book is unchallenging to the reader," Kragen wrote. "After all, Carter is certainly a complex character who is well drawn, engaging and has kept my attention through a long and fascinating read."

Megan Smith perhaps summed up the novel discussing how Gold skirted the issue of explaining magic tricks (which cannot legally be explained, since you have to promise not to reveal the secret when you buy the trick): "He creates the illusion of telling you about the illusion."

This book is in many ways a sprawling magic act: Little is what it seems at the beginning but it all comes out right in the end.

P.S.: One final "Carter Beats the Devil" note — alert reader David Greenlee of Kane'ohe found the elusive Hawai'i connection between Carter and the Islands.

"One of the "thank you" parts of this book acknowledges the contributions of Mike Caveney of Magic Words, who wrote a biography of Carter. Caveney is a touring magician as well as a writer and provided much background detail on what life on the road was like in that time. Logistics were more difficult than the illusions. Mike's brother, Rob Caveney, is an Aloha Airlines pilot who lives in Kailua," Greenlee reveals.

" 'Carter Beats the Devil' was fun to read, well paced and rich in historical detail," our alert reader goes on to comment. "I learned more about Warren G. Harding than I ever expected to. Some of the events depicted actually happened — for instance the burning of all his personal papers (which may explain in part why we know so little of this president)."

Thanks for reading along with us, alert readers. Watch these pages for a new reading suggestion June 1.