Name: The Museum Of Extraordinary Things A Novel
ISBN: 9781451693560

The Museum Of Extraordinary Things A Novel

Lynette Pedersen

I feel like the title held more promise. I didn't fully understand that the author's primary objective with the narrative was to illustrate the time period and the real history of New York and Coney Island during this time until I read the epilogue. I was expecting a more fantastic story, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. I felt like I spent a lot of time waiting for something to happen, but I understand now that the focus really was more on the atmosphere than the tale itself. 

I'm also still a bit ambivalent about the narrative technique. Two first person narratives combined with a third person omniscient narrative was a bit of a challenge to follow. The first person narratives are also written completely in italics in my e-book version, which is kind of annoying in general--reading that much text in an italic font will make your eyes tired. 

All in all it wasn't terrible, but I think my expectations were off point and that's what caused it to disappoint a bit.

Mary Rose Luksha

Great things:
Descriptive writing: I absolutely loved Hoffman's depiction of turn of the century New York. She perfectly captured the dichotomy of nature versus industry - how there are people raising chickens in their yard and you cross a bridge and there are gigantic buildings filled with people at work, and the teeming struggle of the aftermath of prosperity for some and poverty for the masses.
She also did a wonderful job writing about sideshow acts. A woman with no arms, a "wolfman," all these people viewed as monsters in society, but Hoffman writes about them with grace and depth.

Not-so-great things:
The love story. Ugh, the love story. You know right away these two characters are going to fall in love with each other. It's written as though it's inevitable. Which is fine, an inevitable love, how romantic. Except. There was never a scene between the love birds, in my opinion, where after reading it I thought, "yes, that's why they're in love." They just seem to be in love because it's convenient to the story. (view spoiler)[ I understand the initial attraction, Coralie is locked away by her insane "dad" and Eddie is the first man she sees without being under her father's watchful eye. And Eddie is so full of self-loathing that he feels at home with the sideshow "freaks" and then he sees Coralie and falls for her. I get that. But there's never a scene of discovering something deeper that will hold them together past the first stages of a relationship. It just felt hard to believe that those characters would risk so much for each other without much more than a hope.  (hide spoiler)]

Dorian Avers

** spoiler alert **
            2.5 Stars. When deciding whether or not to purchase this book I was looking through ratings and reviews on Goodreads and saw someone say something along the lines of "this is what The Night Circus wanted to be" or something like that and I immediately purchased it. Although I would choose this over The Night Circus, I was still pretty disappointed. There were bits of this book that were so dark. Like how the Professor made Coralie perform for men, the multiple deaths and attacks, and the way that all working human beings in this book were treated. I just realized a parallel between the factory workers and the people who were put on display by the Professor. They were treated poorly, given next to no rights and barely any pay for their work. The people that worked in the factories were seen as expendable and less than, they were lepers to the rich just like the people deemed "freaks" who worked for the professor, both only useful when working. Other than that they didn't need to seen or heard. Better left on the fringes of society.
 I thought the whole romance between Coralie and Eddie was poorly developed, there was no anticipation. He falls in love abruptly and not in a cute way and then she's sitting on his lap a few pages later even though she has no experience touching men, it was just strange. 
 DON'T READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE NEVER READ JANE EYRE AND WANT TO IN THE FUTURE. I know that Jane Eyre is a classic and therefore most people expect you to have read it, so telling anything about it shouldn't count as spoilers, but it's still not cool to do that. That was a big pet peeve of mine throughout this novel. We just got a summary of Jane Eyre and little parallels throughout this novel and I could've done without. Like is this book supposed to be a loose retelling? I don't know if Hoffman's writing just isn't for me, but at times this felt much more like a creative history paper. We'd get a paragraph of a historical event or monument, and sometimes that was interesting-like I looked into Lilliplutia and Coney Island sounds like this wildly interesting place and I remember reading a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and how tragic it was-but other times I would've rather just had a clearer image of the setting. The chunks of history prevented me from being completely drawn into the fictional story. I also could've done without the little blurb about the elephant burning alive in the fire, it's stuck with me and that added nothing to the story. 
 It's hard to rank a book highly when for the majority of the novel I didn't enjoy Coralie's POV. I think Hoffman should've dove into the dark bits head first or focused more on the museum and those characters. This all just felt a bit unsure of what it wanted to be and it could've been SO much better.

The Museum Of Extraordinary Things A Novel

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