Cooting’ is a slang word describing a transgressive sexual act. I had never come across it before, either the word or the act, but I discovered the meaning (as no doubt you will too, after you read this) in the online Urban Dictionary. I don’t want to repeat the definition here. It is beyond question thoroughly disgusting.

But alphabetization of the authors produces its own oddness. There is Enid Blyton cheek by jowl with J G Ballard. And George Orwell and Beatrix Potter lie next to each other, even though three decades separate them. (I’m not saying which one came first.) The events of the past are told through the diaries of nineteenth century magicians Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden. The diaries are read by their great-grandchildren, Kate Angier and Andrew Westley (born Nicholas Borden) who meet in the present day, with the two diary accounts being interspersed with events of Kate's and Andrew's framing story throughout the novel. Andrew's story is related to his childhood, being adopted and his current job as a journalist. Kate's story is related to a traumatic event that happened when she was five years old where she witnessed a small boy murdered by her father. This leads her to search for Andrew whom she believes was the twin of the boy she witnessed die. As the diaries are read, the truth of the what happened to Andrew's twin is explained by the history of Angier and Borden.The 100 Greatest Movies Of The 21st Century: 70 - 61". Empire. January 11, 2020. Archived from the original on January 10, 2021 . Retrieved January 11, 2020.

In the final section of the novel, Kate and Andrew's mystery is revealed. Andrew Westley goes into the Angier family vault and finds all of Rupert Angier's near-lifeless shells (the prestiges) labelled with the date and place they were created. Andrew also finds a prestige of a small boy labeled Nicholas Julius Borden, with his place of creation listed as Caldlow House. It is then understood that Andrew himself never had a twin. When Kate and Andrew were children, their families had met in an attempt to mend the rift between them. However, during an argument, Kate's father had cast the young Nicholas Borden into the Tesla device, rendering the "prestige" Nicholas Borden lifeless on the ground and creating the duplicate who later became Andrew Westley. It is also revealed to Kate Angier and Andrew Westley that Angier's attempt to become whole again was successful, and some form of Rupert Angier had continued to survive in the Caldlow House to the present day. I see my last entry here was more than two months ago. There has been a period of delay, not at all my doing. Meanwhile, I have news of two or three public events in which I shall soon be taking part:Today was planned to be the last day of our membership of the EU. Thankfully postponed yet again, it has become instead the first day of the General Election campaign. I have never voted Tory in my life, and in the past I worked as a campaign volunteer for the Labour Party. But should you sense even the whisper of a bat’s wing of temptation to vote for Corbyn’s party, I recommend you first to read Tom Bowyer’s biography of Corbyn, just so you know what you would be voting for.

Though the basic premise of the story is the same for both the book and the movie, the actual events that occur between the two men competing with each other are almost entirely different. If I had never seen the movie, I would have found the book completely fascinating, and would have read it a second time immediately after finishing it - that's how compelling the story is. It keeps you on your seat the whole time, just like the movie. The ending. In the novel the central mystery about Borden is not concealed from the reader. Most readers of the book work things out for themselves once it becomes apparent that there is a mystery. Christopher Nolan did not grasp this subtlety. In his film he tried to hide the mystery, then weakly presented the revelation of it as a “twist” ending.

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Here is the cover for the Gollancz edition of my new novel Airside, which will be published later this month.