When I picked up this book at a cute bookstore in Burlington, I did not realize that it was written by the same author who wrote “Waking the Moon”, a When I picked up this book at a cute bookstore in Burlington, I did not realize that it was written by the same author who wrote “Waking the Moon”, a book that was much better in theory than in practice. I think I would have been more hesitant to pick it up had my brain made than connection, but I decided to carry on reading it anyway. Turn of the century Chicago, circuses, cross-dressers, mysteries: those are all things I love reading about, so maybe this time, Elizabeth Hand would work out for me.
Well, as you might infer from the rating, I was not as impressed as I had hoped. While the story was intriguing, the writing felt a bit flat and the red herrings felt silly. I was discussing this with my husband, who has pointed out that I’ve made similar comments about a few recently published novels that I came across: the themes and core elements reel me in, but the lack of atmosphere leaves me disappointed.
Set in Chicago in 1915, “Curious Toys” is about Pin, a 14 years old girl who has never felt comfortable in her skin. She wears a binding across her chest and boys’ clothes because that’s simply what feels right for her. Her mother is a fortune teller at Riverview Park, a popular carnival, and most of the employees, security guards and patrons fully believe her to be a boy. She makes a little cash delivering drugs on behalf of one of the entertainers to the nearby movie studios. One day, between deliveries, she notices a young girl and a man boarding one of the little boats of the Hellgate ride, and then notices the man leaving the attraction alone. Her curiosity gets the best of her and she soon finds the girl’s dead body. That young girl’s death reminds Pin of the disappearance of her younger sister a couple of years before, and she begins to suspect that they were both killed by the same person.
In fairness, this book is not all bad. I enjoyed the short chapters, that trick the reader into reading “just one more” until you have gobbled up a hundred pages, and I found the character of Pin refreshing and written with great sensitivity. But I never got a feeling for the setting, I wanted more character development for all of them, and I felt like Elizabeth Hand scattered herself into too many directions with the wide cast she created for this story.
I think it is safe to say that Ms. Hand and I are just not meant to be. I need to feel more than she gives me when I read....more
After being blown away by “City of Stairs” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I eagerly hunted down more books my Mr. Robert Jackson Bennett:After being blown away by “City of Stairs” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I eagerly hunted down more books my Mr. Robert Jackson Bennett: the first of his other works to fall in my hands was “The Troupe”, which I cracked open happily, as anything vaudeville or circus themed makes me totally giddy.
While the story is seen through the eyes of young piano prodigy George Carole, “The Troupe” is more the story of Heironomo Silenus, a strange man who leads his unusual company of vaudevillians across the small town circuit. Their performances are thought by everyone to be wonderful, despite most people mysteriously forgetting parts of the show… George originally follows Silenus because he suspects the man of being his father, but an encounter with a creepy gray-clad man changes the nature of this family reunion entirely, and before he knows it, George is now part of Silenus’ troupe and becomes better acquainted with its strange performers – not to mention their true purpose.
I loved the characters, and the way the pacing leads them to slowly reveal themselves to the reader as the plot unfolds. It takes a while before we really get to know the enigmatic Colette, Franny, Kingsley and Stanley, but the wait is absolutely worth it, as the intricate relationships between the characters push the plot forward like a perfectly set time-bomb...
I found the story fascinating, and creepy in a truly Bradbury-esque way: it doesn’t have the poetic prose of say “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but the sense of wonder and magic is in the same vein. There is no doubt that this is an early book, but you can definitely see the potential, the way Bennett is sharpening his teeth and working on the chops that will eventually create “The Divine Cities”: the awesome ideas and brilliant thoughts are clearly in his head and making their way on the page already.
Recommended for fans of dark fantasy and vaudeville!...more
3 and half, rounded down because I won't be re-reading it.
I almost feel guilty for not liking this book more than I did. I think I got really excited 3 and half, rounded down because I won't be re-reading it.
I almost feel guilty for not liking this book more than I did. I think I got really excited because it had so many elements I love and can’t get enough of and got my hopes too high. I enjoyed it and I really recommend it to those who, like me, love a circus freak story, but it wasn’t as satisfying as I expected.
The story centers around Kitty, a young British girl who is, for lack of a better word, lost on Coney Island. Her mother and her are staying at a hotel, and when Kitty comes back to the hotel after running an errand for her mother, the management claims to have never seen her before and that no one by her mother’s name is staying there… A con-man named Archie finds Kitty on a bench by the beach and takes her under his wing. This means helping him weasel a few bucks out of people, but it also means being introduced to the world of Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet, a mostly ignored museum filled to brim with strange and beautiful artefacts which also serves at home and meeting place for many of the island’s freaks. The regulars of Magruder’s decide to help Kitty figure out what happened to her mother, but a sudden and virulent epidemic turns their world upside down.
The premise of this book hooked me instantly. I loves me circus stories!! I’ve had a very successful reading streak with books about carnies in the last year, so I immediately got myself a copy of “Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet”, expecting to be as thrilled with it as I had been with “The Church of Marvels” and the “Night Circus”. The idea of a world where “Unusuals” stick together and where the “Normals” are the strange ones is something that attracts me almost irresistibly, and I am always very excited to dive into a book set in precisely that sort of place.
Alas. While “Magruder’s” brought me to an amazing place (turn of the century Coney Island), introduced me to a broad cast of lovable and unique characters (Rosalind, Zeph and the doc were my favorites) and kept me on the edge of my seat with its fast-paced and often surprising narrative, it fell a little bit flat. If I had to sum up what bothered me about this book in one word, it would be “superficial”. You see, while everything in it was great, it was all so under-developed. I felt like we were barely grazing the surface of a fascinating place and time, and just getting acquainted with the Magruder’s regulars when I wanted to become their best friend. The book could have used about 100 more pages, room enough to flesh out the characters, solidify the world-building and atmosphere.
I must add that as mentioned above, I am crazy about some of the characters H.P. Wood created, but a special mention must to go Rosalind. This character defies clichés, has the biggest, kindest heart I have seen in fiction in a long time and is unabashedly themselves. Rosalind embraces difference and sees a beauty in it that Normals would never understand. I want a whole book just about Rosalind please!
To sum it up, I enjoyed the book, but it left me hungry for more. I recommend it for people who also like stories about carnies, but be prepared: this one I a bit on the “diet” side…...more
Creepy and nostalgic, huh? Well, doesn’t that sound just perfect! I mean, I’ve loved every Ray Bradbury book I ever got my handOctober spooky read #5!
Creepy and nostalgic, huh? Well, doesn’t that sound just perfect! I mean, I’ve loved every Ray Bradbury book I ever got my hands on, so I was quite confident that “Something Wicked This Way Comes” would be a lovely autumnal delight: I had been saving it for crisper days, for thick scarf weather, to be enjoyed with a piece of apple pie or a nice, smoky whiskey (or both!).
The natural sequel to “Dandelion Wine” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), this is the story of a mysterious carnival that rolls into peaceful Green Town, Illinois, just as the leaves start changing colours. Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are best friends, and in some ways, two sides of the same coin. One is impatient and reckless, the other more quiet and thoughtful. They are at that precarious age where you are neither a child nor a teenager just yet. They witness the carnival's arrival in town over night, and even though they immediately know that this is no ordinary circus, they are delighted. They will soon come to see that Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has some unsettling powers
Will’s father Charles is what one might call an older man: he married a woman who was much younger than him, had a child late in life and often feels as if there was an unnatural gap of time between himself and his son. The carnival that snuck into town overnight has a very different meaning for him than it has for the boys; Charles has read enough books to know that when something sounds too good to be true, the hidden price tag is often much steeper than anticipated.
As I have come to expect - and look forward to - with a Bradbury book, I was treated to a delicious dose of nostalgia for a time that might have never really been. But I do love this enchanted memory lane, even if it only ever existed in Bradbury’s wistful mind. And I simply can’t resist the appeal of a carnival: had I been born in a different time and place, I would have totally been that kid who runs off to join the circus (too bad you can’t make a living being a tattooed lady anymore!). And if I had read this book when I was younger, I just might have: Bradbury conjures the smells and noises of this strange carnival so vividly that you’ll look up from the book and wonder where the candied apple vendors have vanished to.
But mostly, he paints a vivid picture of the feelings one experiences not simply growing up, but growing old. While this book sometimes has a certain vibe of being written for younger readers, the character of Charles changes everything precisely because he is a man who, as he puts it himself, settled and started late in life. Fifty-four years old is not old by today's standards, but in the 1930s, it was - and Charles feels unable to connect with anyone, but especially Will, because of his age. However, being older and having experienced things the boys haven't is key to this story, and to defeating the darker impulses that seek to seduce them. He is the perfect illustration that age is greatly tempered by one's attitude towards it. When a maze of fucked up mirrors show you something you don't like, its tempting to hop on the enchanted carousel that will shave a few years off, but Charles that would be losing sight of the good things that come with getting on in years.
“Dandelion Wine” was about the end of childhood and the loss of a certain innocence; “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is about the discovery of the dark side of human nature, of the temptations that come with growing up and of the importance of keeping a part of your mind young. 4 and a half stars!
After their father injures his hand and loses his job as a boot stitcher, the four Turner sisters - Nell, Gert, Winnie and Kit - are groomed by their After their father injures his hand and loses his job as a boot stitcher, the four Turner sisters - Nell, Gert, Winnie and Kit - are groomed by their mother into become a traveling vaudeville act in order to pay the bills.
On paper, this book should have been a slam dunk for me: its set in Upstate New York in the 1920's, its about vaudeville and sisters going through a tough time, supporting each other and making a good life for themselves. And yet... something about it just failed to grab me.
Fay tells this story through the eyes of Gert and Winnie, who are the two sisters with the most opposite characters: the first is flirty and strong-headed, the second shy and bookish. This also should have worked, as such characters would have looked at the same situations very differently. But I often had to check the chapter heading to make sure I knew which sister was narrating this particular one. Also, when their mother Ethel decides that the sisters will become acrobats and makes them practice, that decision seems to come out of nothing more than her own frustrated desire to be on stage: wasn't there anything more practical and less risky they could have done to make some money? They also seem to just pick up the gymnastics out of the blue: we never know if they had any background in it, or if it was hard, if they got hurt or bruised or anything.
This should have been about women making a space for themselves on their own terms in a time and place where women had precious little agency of their own. But that also fell a bit flat as the sisters are basically under their stage-mother's thumb. We get the idea that Gert wants to be more than someone's wife and that Winnie wants to go to college and maybe be a doctor, but I never really felt their yearnings. Fay also pays lip services to a few social issues of the day, such as the constant discrimination the tap dancer Tip has to struggle with, but again, I didn't really feel it.
I think that the lack of atmosphere and vitality is what might have killed it for me. I could never really visualize the girls, their act or costumes, the landscapes they evolved through.
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