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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
Author: Melanie Benjamin
Title: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb
Description: Lavinia Warren Bump (Vinnie) was a normal baby, but as a toddler, she stopped growing. She topped out at 32” tall, and her little sister Minnie was just a little shorter. Although she started out as a schoolteacher, she wanted to see the world, and her size gave her an excuse to leave home and travel. After a rough start as a sideshow attraction, she met P.T. Barnum and became one of his wonders.
Review source: I got this ARC at ALA last year, but the book has been out for a year now.
Plot: The author has done some wonderfully thorough historical research here. Her plot follows the incidents in Vinnie’s life.
Characters: It’s definitely a character-driven novel, my favorite kind. Vinnie, Minnie, Charles (Tom Thumb), and Barnum, along with many supporting characters all come to life here.
Writing style: Vinnie narrates the book with a good deal of foreshadowing (“If only I had known then what I know now…”).
Audience: It’s literary fiction; I think all ages and genders would enjoy it.
Wrap-up: I wasn’t expecting much out of this book, but it snuck up on me and grabbed me! Rarely do I read a book straight through (I’m usually reading it along with 20 or so others); this one merited a Saturday/Sunday read! I think I enjoyed the historical veracity along with a chance to imagine what it could be like to live such an unusual life. Highly recommended! 5/5*
Title: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb
Description: Lavinia Warren Bump (Vinnie) was a normal baby, but as a toddler, she stopped growing. She topped out at 32” tall, and her little sister Minnie was just a little shorter. Although she started out as a schoolteacher, she wanted to see the world, and her size gave her an excuse to leave home and travel. After a rough start as a sideshow attraction, she met P.T. Barnum and became one of his wonders.
Review source: I got this ARC at ALA last year, but the book has been out for a year now.
Plot: The author has done some wonderfully thorough historical research here. Her plot follows the incidents in Vinnie’s life.
Characters: It’s definitely a character-driven novel, my favorite kind. Vinnie, Minnie, Charles (Tom Thumb), and Barnum, along with many supporting characters all come to life here.
Writing style: Vinnie narrates the book with a good deal of foreshadowing (“If only I had known then what I know now…”).
Audience: It’s literary fiction; I think all ages and genders would enjoy it.
Wrap-up: I wasn’t expecting much out of this book, but it snuck up on me and grabbed me! Rarely do I read a book straight through (I’m usually reading it along with 20 or so others); this one merited a Saturday/Sunday read! I think I enjoyed the historical veracity along with a chance to imagine what it could be like to live such an unusual life. Highly recommended! 5/5*
I found this to be a fascinating read. I thought the author did a great job presenting how Vinnie might have felt. I liked the facts woven in with the fiction. The portrayal of the Mormons in the book didn't set so well with me, but it was interesting anyway.
Absolutely brilliant. A moving story, powerfully written. Not one I'll forget in a while.
Talk about some literary cognitive dissonance.
Side A: I loved it. I adored the topic. I adored the time period. I adored the quick pace and the rich descriptions.
Side B: I loathed it. Vinnie was less than endearing. The tone was melancholy and heavy. The main love story (NOT Mr. Tom Thumb, fyi) was not believable. And, finally, I felt like Ms. Benjamin completely glossed over the things that were advertised as being some of the more interesting aspects of the book, such as the coinciding of Mrs. Tom Thumb's career with the Civil War and the Gilded Age.
This is not the first time I've experienced such ambivalence with Ms. Benjamin. Her book, Alice I Have Been, had the same depressing tone and the same sense of incomplete characterization. But, at the same time, she picks such marvelous subject matter that I find myself thinking with her every release: "Ooo! I have to read that."
And I enjoy reading it... for awhile, until the bleak, oppressive, hopeless heartbreaking part starts to weigh down the plot. Furthermore, I don't think the dismal tone is necessary. Ms. Benjamin picks interesting characters who are strong, resilient, and smart. Why she associates this as a correlation with an unhappy existence, I do not know.
Hopefully her next book (about Mrs. Charles Lindbergh) breaks from this pattern, although I highly doubt it, considering that whole baby killing thing....
Side A: I loved it. I adored the topic. I adored the time period. I adored the quick pace and the rich descriptions.
Side B: I loathed it. Vinnie was less than endearing. The tone was melancholy and heavy. The main love story (NOT Mr. Tom Thumb, fyi) was not believable. And, finally, I felt like Ms. Benjamin completely glossed over the things that were advertised as being some of the more interesting aspects of the book, such as the coinciding of Mrs. Tom Thumb's career with the Civil War and the Gilded Age.
This is not the first time I've experienced such ambivalence with Ms. Benjamin. Her book, Alice I Have Been, had the same depressing tone and the same sense of incomplete characterization. But, at the same time, she picks such marvelous subject matter that I find myself thinking with her every release: "Ooo! I have to read that."
And I enjoy reading it... for awhile, until the bleak, oppressive, hopeless heartbreaking part starts to weigh down the plot. Furthermore, I don't think the dismal tone is necessary. Ms. Benjamin picks interesting characters who are strong, resilient, and smart. Why she associates this as a correlation with an unhappy existence, I do not know.
Hopefully her next book (about Mrs. Charles Lindbergh) breaks from this pattern, although I highly doubt it, considering that whole baby killing thing....
I liked this book a lot. The characters are well drawn and the book is very exciting as we follow Vinnie through her adventuresome life. Towards the middle she does become rather unsympathetic as a character but I think this adds to the realism of the story. I liked this better than Alice I have Been but both books are well worth reading.
I won this book through a Goodreads Giveaway.
This is an excellent, excellent book. I've been interested in people involved in "the traveling life" ever since I stumbled upon Joseph Merrick's (the Elephant Man) story about 10 years ago. However, though I'd read a little about P.T. Barnum, Lavinia Warren Bump (AKA Mrs. Tom Thumb) is not someone who had really entered my consciousness.
The author does a great job of creating and growing Vinnie's character, as well as the characters around her. Everyone in the book feels absolutely real. Vinnie's a strong-willed, intelligent woman, but is by no means perfect. Yet it's easy to like her and feel for her despite her flaws.
The descriptions of the time and the place(s) are also very well done and help bring the story to life. It's obvious Benjamin worked hard to create her story around established historical and biographical facts, and for that alone she gets kudos from me -- I get so sick of authors who screw with real people's lives and personalities just because it "makes a better story" (and often it doesn't.)
I haven't read Alice I Have Been yet, but after reading this book, I certainly will.
This is an excellent, excellent book. I've been interested in people involved in "the traveling life" ever since I stumbled upon Joseph Merrick's (the Elephant Man) story about 10 years ago. However, though I'd read a little about P.T. Barnum, Lavinia Warren Bump (AKA Mrs. Tom Thumb) is not someone who had really entered my consciousness.
The author does a great job of creating and growing Vinnie's character, as well as the characters around her. Everyone in the book feels absolutely real. Vinnie's a strong-willed, intelligent woman, but is by no means perfect. Yet it's easy to like her and feel for her despite her flaws.
The descriptions of the time and the place(s) are also very well done and help bring the story to life. It's obvious Benjamin worked hard to create her story around established historical and biographical facts, and for that alone she gets kudos from me -- I get so sick of authors who screw with real people's lives and personalities just because it "makes a better story" (and often it doesn't.)
I haven't read Alice I Have Been yet, but after reading this book, I certainly will.
I started out really liking the book but by the time I finished I was really struggling. It just seemed to drag on and I was just reading to get it finished. I guess that partly due to the fact that I didn't really care for Vinnie - the main character. She was a very self-absorbed and negative person. Granted her stature would probably have required her to be assertive and strong willed. But she just wasn't very nice. Her relationship/attitude towards her husband did not make me feel sympathetic towards her.
I was really looking forward to an interesting perspective on an interesting historical character - sadly the author didn't really create that.
I was really looking forward to an interesting perspective on an interesting historical character - sadly the author didn't really create that.
This was a very good book. It is written as fiction based on the truth. I wasn't even certain Tom Thomb was a real person let alone Mercy Lavinia "Vinnie" Warren Bump, later known as Mrs. Tom Thumb. It was also fascinating to learn about PT Barnum who on some level was Vinnie's true soul mate. As the author wrote in the back of the book "I believe that every novel is either a mystery, a tragedy or a love story - some are all three - and it became clear to me that this is a love story. An unusual love story; an affair of the mind rather than the body."
A fictionalized account of a real woman, but unfortunately one that I just couldn't get into. Vinnie wasn't a woman I could care ever about. She was selfish and vain and only cared about herself and her younger sister who was small like she was. She wasn't very considerate of her husband, her marriage was not a true love match and there are suggestions that Vinnie truly loved P.T. Barnum instead.
Much of Vinnie's story is left to speculation or an assumption that the reader already knows what has happened. At one point in her travels, Vinnie visits Utah and the author's portrayal of Mormons is very cliched and stereotypical, rather than accurate and genuine.
I found nothing heroic or inspiring about Vinnie or her story. I can't recommend the book.
Much of Vinnie's story is left to speculation or an assumption that the reader already knows what has happened. At one point in her travels, Vinnie visits Utah and the author's portrayal of Mormons is very cliched and stereotypical, rather than accurate and genuine.
I found nothing heroic or inspiring about Vinnie or her story. I can't recommend the book.