Having enjoyed State of Wonder and Bel Canto, I though I'd try some of Patchett's other titles. While I enjoyed this as I read it, once I put it down, I felt like there could have been more to it. We only see Parsifal and Phan though dreams, and since they comprised Sabine's life, I felt like we could have gotten to know them better. I was also surprised at how little magic was really discussed. I though we'd hear more of where they went to perform, their mishaps while learning tricks, their visits to Magic House... something more than observing card tricks and eggs. And I wondered what had gone wrong in Sabine's upbringing that she never did develop a life of her own...she had none of the Fetters traumas against her. Yet no love life, sporadic magic acts, living in a house that wasn't really hers to begin with, a side job she doesn't seem to need...though it is appropriately passive that she builds models of other people's designs. At the end of the book she is possibly finding a more active life, but really she's just absconding with another man's life...first taking on Parsifal's family as her own, then embedding herself even more firmly by building a relationship with his sister and nephews. I'd rather she find something that was just her own to hold onto. But I guess that just wasn't the story that Patchett was telling.