More Drawing Room Deceptions by Guy Hollingworth
Twenty-five years is a long time to wait. It was absolutely worth it.
When Drawing Room Deceptions appeared in 1999, it left a mark on card magic that has never quite faded. Denis Behr has named it as one of his favourite magic books every time someone has asked. Mac King calls Guy Hollingworth one of magic’s greatest living practitioners. And for twenty-five years, performers around the world have quietly wondered when the follow-up would come.
More Drawing Room Deceptions is it. Photographed throughout by Daniel Netto in a series of images so striking that Mac King says you could buy the book just to look at them, this is one of the most anticipated and most beautiful magic books in recent memory.
Nearly 300 pages. More than 500 photographs. And an extraordinary breadth of material drawn from Guy’s professional working repertoire, covering card magic, coin work, parlour pieces, and the kind of insights into thinking and construction that make everything else you do slightly better just by absorbing them.
The card routines are where Guy has always been strongest, and More Drawing Room Deceptions delivers. His take on Hofzinser’s Aces brings fresh thinking to one of the most studied plots in all of card magic. The Universal Card is a powerful and elegantly structured effect that demonstrates exactly what Guy means when he talks about what a card routine should accomplish. Card to Pocket, Story Deck, and further original routines round out a card section that any serious performer will return to repeatedly.
The technical material is equally substantial. The Topless Top Change is the kind of sleight that looks better the closer you examine it. A false count that adds a palmed card gives you a new tool that solves problems you may not have realised you had. New work on the Lateral Palm expands one of close-up magic’s most versatile concealment techniques in directions Guy has not shared publicly before.
What genuinely sets this book apart from a standard card magic release is the non-card material. A coin routine in which a single coin repeatedly grows in size is the kind of left-field impossibility that only someone thinking about magic the way Guy does would arrive at. An inventive jacket holdout. His preferred opener for strolling performances. And a refined version of Professor’s Nightmare that shows what twenty-five years of performing a classic can teach you.
Denis Behr called it a must-have and said he was amazed by how much brand-new material is packed inside. Mac King calls it an enduring work of art by one of magic’s greatest living practitioners. If you loved Drawing Room Deceptions, this is everything you hoped the follow-up would be. And if you are coming to Guy Hollingworth’s work for the first time, this is an extraordinary place to start.
Format: Hardcover, nearly 300 pages, 500+ photographs by Daniel Netto.
Difficulty: Advanced
Best for: Serious card workers, close-up performers, and anyone who wants to think more deeply about how great magic is constructed
