Summary of The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker
Uncanny Magazine #67, November/December 2025
Lottie arrives in America at sixteen, sent alone by her father on a steamship dressed as a boy for safety. Her Uncle Albert, who runs Albertini’s Astonishing Traveling Show, decides she’ll stay a boy for the show—billing her as “Johnny Chess, The Boy Wonder,” a twelve-year-old mentalist. Lottie accepts this bargain because performing as a boy earns her a place in the lineup when Uncle Albert’s views about women on stage would otherwise exclude her. Her act is genuine mentalism taught by her parents, who ran spiritualist shows where her mother mingled with audiences gathering information and Lottie served as their tiny spy.
In her second season with the show, fifteen-year-old Susanna Miller appears backstage seeking work. She’s the daughter of Gerard Milford, an illusionist who used her in his vanishing act from age six to fourteen. When she tried to develop her own act, her father mocked her: “What is a woman’s place on the stage? Nobody would take you seriously as an illusionist.” Susanna left anyway, developing a comedy magic act that plays into audience expectations—she’s deliberately clumsy, sneezing flowers into existence, tripping over cards that land edge-up. It’s genius, allowing her to do magic by not threatening serious male magicians.
Key Plot Points
- Uncle Albert assigns Susanna to share Lottie’s hotel room, and they become instant friends, sharing the experience of performing gender roles to survive on stage
- Susanna grows frustrated with being pigeonholed as comedy relief and develops serious illusions, including a cigarette trick that impresses even jaded Lottie
- Frederic Bowers (the Master of Mystery) claims Susanna stole his cigarette trick and demands she stop performing it, though she developed it first
- Uncle Albert sides with Bowers, accusing Susanna of theft; Lottie fails to defend her friend, paralyzed by fear of losing her own position
- Susanna leaves the show in fury, telling Lottie: “You’re going to hide behind Johnny Chess forever, and if the day ever comes that you can’t, you have no other plan”
Three years pass. Lottie continues performing as Johnny Chess while various mediocre illusionists cycle through the show, including Susanna’s father (who doesn’t perform the impressive vanishing act she described). Eventually, Lottie discovers Susanna has reinvented herself as “The Magnificent Millay,” receiving praise in trade magazines while critics say she’s “surprisingly good” and “too good” for a woman. Lottie clips every mention over four years, tracking her friend’s rise.
When Uncle Albert receives an invitation to “The Illusion to End All Illusions” at their canceled New York venue, Lottie realizes it’s Susanna’s show. The invitation specifically uninvites “the kid”—Lottie herself. Hurt but determined, Lottie borrows a dress and attends using the dead Frederic Bowers’s ticket. The lobby is packed with famous magicians, all claiming Susanna stole their signature tricks. When ushers kick Lottie out, she sneaks backstage, where Susanna confronts her and insists she leave. Lottie agrees but finds Susanna’s dressing room with a notebook documenting all her original illusions—proof she developed everything herself.
Lottie makes it back to the wing just as Susanna performs her finale. From her angle, Lottie sees the trick and its effect simultaneously: the audience transforms from skepticism to wonder to despair, then “the white blaze of nothingness” overtakes them. Everything on stage vanishes except flowers. Susanna never takes a curtain call. The notebook’s final page reads: “Take it all.” Lottie finds a wig, tailcoat, and key to Susanna’s hotel room, where notebooks lay out an entire spring tour. Lottie steps into Susanna’s identity, becoming the Magnificent Millay.
The story concludes with Lottie—now established as Millay—revealing that the magicians who attended are either dead or walking dead, unable to remember that night though they light up at Millay’s name. She believes Susanna orchestrated everything: the uninvitation ensuring Lottie would sneak in, positioning her backstage rather than in the killing audience, making Lottie her witness and legacy. It was a gift, a punishment, or something more complicated—a transformation Susanna forced on the friend who once failed to defend her, granting Lottie the career she herself could never have while ensuring she’d spend the rest of her life trying to understand the one true Millay Illusion: Susanna’s own perfect disappearance.