Powell creates such interesting characters, however, this wasn't my favorite of her books. This one is about a woman who is married to an author who dumps her so easily when his hormones get lit up by someone new, and then he becomes famous. She carries the flame for him for years afterwards, and another author, her "friend," uses her story for fodder for his next book. I couldn't relate; someone who I care for starts being unresponsive to me, I go cold turkey with my feelings for the pendejo, until I'm cured. ( )

I am always curious about good authors whose books I’ve missed over the years. In a Wall Street Journal article (“A Celebrated Unknown”) about composer Harold Shapero (January 15, 2015), Terry Teachout mentioned Dawn Powell as someone who “wrote some of the wittiest comic novels of the 20th century but has yet to become truly popular.” When Powell died in 1965, her novels were out of print and remained so until the 1990’s. I browsed some of her books on Amazon and decided to read “Turn, Magic Wheel” (1936), a biting satire of the rarified world of authors, publishers, businessmen and socialites in Manhattan during the 1930’s. In the first chapter, we are introduced to Dennis Orphen, a writer who has just completed a novel using his good friend Effie’s egotistical ex-husband and author Andy Callingham as undisguised fodder for his book. Andy has left Effie and another woman named Marian before Powell’s novel even gets started. In fact, we don’t actually meet Andy until the end of the book. Effie spends much of the novel denying her life alone and waiting for Andy to return to her (hence the title from Theocritus: “Turn, magic wheel, bring homeward him I love”). Effie is a good friend and confidante to Orphen, who meanwhile carries on an affair with Corrine, the wife of a successful businessman. In fact, it seems like a lot of the characters in this book are carrying on affairs with the spouses of their friends and business associates. Effie is the only character in the book to experience any emotional growth. She finally gives up her romantic memory of Andy when he shows up at Marian’s death bed and Effie realizes he is a stranger to her both physically and emotionally. Powell has a ruthless, sarcastic sense of humor. The book is full of wit, but it’s hard to take any of the characters too seriously except perhaps Effie (at least by the end of the book). For example, Orphen is very curious about the lives of others, but he has little insight into his own behavior and is blind to the flesh-and-blood woman (Effie) standing right in front of him. Only when Effie goes missing because she is spending all her time at the hospital with the dying Marian does Orphen come to realize what Effie means to him. His insight however is transient and, as the novel ends, Dennis is taking up once again with Corrine who has turned up on his doorstep. This novel is not big on plot, and the characters are hard to like, but it’s an entertaining send-up of these Manhattan high rollers of the 1930’s and their cynical superficial lives. ( )

She might have been New York's answer to Evelyn Waugh, and the writing's lovely, but in this book, she makes the mistake of trying to create one wholly sympathetic character. That never works!

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She thought of how many times guests would have to drink to Baby's birthday before she went crazy with boredom, and she thought this is the good-wife feeling, this teeth clenched, controlled screaming-boredom feeling. The guilty-wife feeling is better for the whole family, she reflected, that remorseful tender understanding, the seeing all his good traits because your badness has canceled his bad ones. The bad wife was far pleasanter around the home, she could stand a lot from a husband because it eased her conscience.

Dawn Powell has been a revelation to me. I hadn't heard of her at all before Turn, Magic Wheel was mentioned somewhere as a clever novel about the New York publishing industry. Powell was a contemporary with the Algonquin Round Table writers, and her writing has a quick, biting wit that Dorothy Parker would recognize, although Powell tempers it with a broad compassion for all her characters. Powell was little known during her career, and she was never able to make a living from her writing. She was quickly forgotten, but has been enthusiastically rediscovered by a few people, enough to have her novels and memoirs reissued.

Turn, Magic Wheel tells the story of a young author whose novel is just being published. He's written a book about a woman whose famous husband left her long ago, but who lives on as if they are simply briefly apart, basking in his reputation. It's about his good friend, who is understandably crushed by his portrayal of her. Meanwhile, the author juggles his experiences with his publisher, his mistress and his complex feelings for the friend he hurt so badly.

Powell is a master of description, creating vivid characters who she describes without pity, but somehow also with a deep understanding. This was a delight to read and I'll be hunting down her other novels. ( )

Hilarious and heartbreaking - sometimes in turns, sometimes simultaneously. It's the second Dawn Powell novel I've read this month, and I loved it so much I started a third the same day. ( )