In the Museum of Extraordinary Things Alice Hoffman delivers another novel of magical storytelling. Set in the early part of the 20th century the novel takes us on a tour of the darker side of New York through the lives of two young people who are inevitably brought together through circumstance and fate.
Hoffman’s tale begins with Coralie who lives at the eponymous Museum of Extraordinary Things standing in the shadows of Dreamland and Luna Park, surviving off people unable to fit into the more famous and inviting attractions of Coney Island. The museum boasts a collection of oddities and grotesqueries presided over by self-proclaimed Professor Sardie who rather grandly claims the exhibits to be of scientific wonder rather than simply entertainment. His daughter Coralie grows up surrounded by such ‘living wonders’ as the Wolfman, a fire-breather and the human butterfly though she is never allowed into the museum until her tenth birthday when her father leads her in to a huge tank of water which she knows immediately that is meant for her. Though she is ashamed and hides the fact, Coralie is extraordinary too. Born with webbed hands she has been fostered her whole life to believe that she is some kind of aquatic creature even to the extent that she thinks she will one day develop gills. She spends great lengths of time swimming in the icy waters surrounding New York becoming accustomed to the extreme temperatures and can spend astonishing amounts of time underwater. It is on one of these excursions that she discovers Eddie Cohen sat at a camp fire with his dog Mitts. Instantly she is attracted to him and dreams of him. In his chapters we learn that he is a Russian immigrant who has eschewed his old life as Ezekiel with his Jewish Orthodox father to become at first a hired hand of Hochman, a revered wizard figure who claims to be a mind reader who solves crimes and find lost children. In actual fact he has a vast collection of people in his employ who do the work for him one of those being Eddie who shows great aptitude for finding things. When one day he sees renowned yet faded photographer Levy his life changes for him and his sole purpose becomes to photograph the world. When Eddie photographs the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire he is drawn into a mystery that will bring him into the life of Coralie.
I was excited to read this, drawn to the magical realism that Alice Hoffman is so wonderful at creating but also the mystery set within this. The fusing of fiction with history only adds to the sense of enchantment you get from reading about the ‘living wonders’ and the other marvels of Coney Island. Her descriptions brilliantly invoke the New York of that day and the sense of change that was happening at that time. The scene at the factory fire in 1911 is particularly well drawn if horrifying in its portrayal. Girls as young as twelve are seen throwing themselves out of windows rather than burning to death in rooms that have been locked by greedy factory owners adding fuel to the workers right’s movement. As well, we hear about the great fire at Dreamland that happened in the same year, the animals screaming in their exhibits as the fire rages around them is enough to send your own heart racing.
It is only in the love story between Coralie and Eddie that I felt the novel was let down slightly. Occasionally it fell into cliché and was underdeveloped which seemed odd as this for me seemed as though it was the overriding story and what everything else led to. However, despite this I was totally engrossed in both the characters stories and was willing them to find each other and rescue one another from their unfulfilled and often horrifying lives.
Maria Reads 