FICTION
Houdini Unbound: Mystery, Music and Flying Machines
Alan Attwood
Melbourne Books, $34.95
In 1910, Harry Houdini, the world-famous Hungarian-American escapologist, arrived in Melbourne on a world tour. In its day, this was a showbusiness event on a scale comparable in our time with someone like Taylor Swift.
Houdini preparing to jump into the Yarra in 1910.Credit: State Library of Victoria
During his visit to Victoria, Houdini went out to Diggers Rest with the aim of achieving the first powered flight to occur in Australia. Competing against Houdini and his French Voisin biplane for that distinction was Lawrence Anderson, the patrician headmaster of Wesley College, whose machine was supplied by the Wright Brothers.
Houdini Unbound is Alan Attwood’s thoughtful and entertaining recreation of Houdini’s time in Australia, featuring a varied cast of characters both historical and fictional.
Among several plot strands, the novel, which is written in the present tense, explores the complex relationship between Houdini and his wife Bess, who we learn gave up her own theatrical career to start a family and now yearns to once again tread the boards.
Houdini’s sojourn in Melbourne begins with a staged leap from Princes Bridge into the murky waters of the Yarra River. As he struggles to untie himself underwater, Houdini believes he encounters the submerged corpse of a woman. Identifying the body becomes a fixation for the man whose showbusiness career is dedicated to cheating death.
Other key events in the novel include a secret (and fictitious) visit to Melbourne by the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini, who is recovering from serious injuries caused by an automobile accident and at the same time battling a career slump that followed the disastrous debut of Madame Butterfly, a work now regarded as a masterpiece but which was savaged by the critics and had to be rewritten.
At the Hotel Metropole, an impressive building with an arcade that stood in Bourke Street until the 1970s, Puccini and Bess form an unlikely romantic friendship based on music. The composer, it seems, is seeking a muse, someone who will lead him to the leading character in his next opera. “The heroine is always at the heart of my operas,” Puccini tells Bess. “And always she is flawed, adored, and doomed. Though perhaps not this time. I am not sure how it will end, if it ends. Minnie is elusive. I have hoped I can find her in Melbourne.”