Sawing a woman in half Sawing a woman in half Sawing a woman in half is a generic name for a number of stage magic tricks in which a person (traditionally a female assistant) is apparently sawn or divided into two or more pieces. There remains a debate about the origin of sawing illusions, with some sources saying a magician named Torrini may have performed the first version in front of Pope Pius VII in 1809. However, it is more likely that the story is a fiction which has its roots in the writings of the famous French magician Jean Robert-Houdin. In his "Memoirs", written
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing In a "New York Times" review, Joshua Cohen described the book as being "in all respects, a heresy — which is to say, Lord above, it’s a future classic." Reviewing the novel for "The Guardian", Anne Enright wrote that it "is hard to read for the best reasons: everything about it is intense and difficult and hard-won." The novel won several awards including the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The Guardian Book Club featured the novel in 2016, and