Spoonbenders

Matty Telemachus left his body for the first time in the summer of 1995, when he was fourteen years old. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that his body expelled him, sending his consciousness flying on a geyser of lust and shame.

Going back through my recent reads I really enjoyed “When We Were Real” so I looked for another novel by Daryl Gregory… and here we are. It took a couple chapters to get in to this book because of needing to understand the context and, additionally, several of the characters are con-man-adjacent hence not obviously sympathetic but after 50 pages I caught a head of steam and plowed rapidly through the story. This novel has a solid core of sadness. Additionally this story is set in the nineties, with references to Wu-Tang clan, ubiquitous AOL discs as well as Gateway Computers with their holstein themed packaging; which is for me, nostalgic but I wonder how it will age. The voice acting is good, in particular I enjoy the voice of Mitzi, the aged, pack-a-day smoker and loanshark.

Teddy Telemachus is a card shark and magician; he may also be some kind of psychic but all we ever see is his ability to perform slight of hand tricks and generally use his confidence man repertoire to make a living. In 1962 he marries Maureen Mckinnon an actual psychic with the talent of astral projection. The story is told through the Telemachus children and grand children. Though set in 1995, there are many flashbacks so that tho story relates history of the family from Teddy and Maureen who met during a college “psychic phenomenon” research project and including Maureen’s death from cancer in 1974. Teddy has long term entanglements with both the Chicago mafia and US government agents involved in Cold War psychic espionage. In the modern day there are five plots following five Telemachuses, these plots with both government and mafia entanglements as well as complications involving psychic powers all como together to a climax that I found clever, touching and entirely satisfactory. The characters are vividly described and have their own arcs.