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A review by obsidian_blue
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
3.0
I have really enjoyed Alice Hoffman's previous novels but have to say that this novel was not on par with them at all.
The Museum of Extraordinary Things is set in the 1900s on Long Island in New York. The novel is told from two points of view.
The first point of view is by Coralie Sardie. Coralie is the daughter of The Professor who owns The Museum of Extraordinary Things that is located in Coney Island. Coralie's father provides regular people with the opportunity to glimpse at "freaks" and other extraordinary things that he possesses in the museum.
The second point of view is told by Eddie Cohen. Eddie is a Jewish immigrant who ran away from his father to work for a man that Eddie believes was just a con man using others for fame and fortune. Eventually Eddie happens upon a photographer who he starts to apprentice for since he loves the way that this man is able to capture people.
Eventually due to outside circumstances Coralie comes upon Eddie and finds herself for the first time thinking about a man.
I ultimately think that this novel was trying to do too much and didn't work that well.
The novel kept switching between Coralie and Eddie. One of them would tell a chapter from their first person narrative and then it would go back into the "present" day with whomever started off the chapter and that section would be told in third person. It didn't help that the first person narrative was written in cursive. It made it pretty hard to read on my Kindle at times and switching back and forth between font styles pretty much made my eyes cross after about an hour. Additionally, these two characters storylines did not really mesh at all and I felt as if I was reading two different books until they came across one another.
I think that the historical details that were sprinkled throughout the novel were at first much appreciated, but then started to bog down the novel. I happen to love the way that Alice Hoffman writes novels and like how she can just describe something in such a way that I can see in my head. However, for some reason while reading this novel I just got really tired of all of the overwrought words. I think her writing about a real time and real events that occurred (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911) ended up taking me out of the novel. This is probably because the way that the novel told it seemed so far removed from that horrible event. It really was just used as a way to set up a further plot that I think could have been told another way since the final denouement was so unsatisfying.
I always find that each of Alice Hoffman's novels possess a bit of magic in them. I always credit this author with writing Magical Fiction novels first before Sarah Addison Allen. That element is one of the reasons why I always love to read her novels since the way she writes her books you end up thinking to yourself well maybe that could actually happen. This one however was pretty cut and dried a fictional novel with historical elements that did not make me feel as much as her other novels did such as Blackbird House.
The Museum of Extraordinary Things is set in the 1900s on Long Island in New York. The novel is told from two points of view.
The first point of view is by Coralie Sardie. Coralie is the daughter of The Professor who owns The Museum of Extraordinary Things that is located in Coney Island. Coralie's father provides regular people with the opportunity to glimpse at "freaks" and other extraordinary things that he possesses in the museum.
The second point of view is told by Eddie Cohen. Eddie is a Jewish immigrant who ran away from his father to work for a man that Eddie believes was just a con man using others for fame and fortune. Eventually Eddie happens upon a photographer who he starts to apprentice for since he loves the way that this man is able to capture people.
Eventually due to outside circumstances Coralie comes upon Eddie and finds herself for the first time thinking about a man.
I ultimately think that this novel was trying to do too much and didn't work that well.
The novel kept switching between Coralie and Eddie. One of them would tell a chapter from their first person narrative and then it would go back into the "present" day with whomever started off the chapter and that section would be told in third person. It didn't help that the first person narrative was written in cursive. It made it pretty hard to read on my Kindle at times and switching back and forth between font styles pretty much made my eyes cross after about an hour. Additionally, these two characters storylines did not really mesh at all and I felt as if I was reading two different books until they came across one another.
I think that the historical details that were sprinkled throughout the novel were at first much appreciated, but then started to bog down the novel. I happen to love the way that Alice Hoffman writes novels and like how she can just describe something in such a way that I can see in my head. However, for some reason while reading this novel I just got really tired of all of the overwrought words. I think her writing about a real time and real events that occurred (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911) ended up taking me out of the novel. This is probably because the way that the novel told it seemed so far removed from that horrible event. It really was just used as a way to set up a further plot that I think could have been told another way since the final denouement was so unsatisfying.
I always find that each of Alice Hoffman's novels possess a bit of magic in them. I always credit this author with writing Magical Fiction novels first before Sarah Addison Allen. That element is one of the reasons why I always love to read her novels since the way she writes her books you end up thinking to yourself well maybe that could actually happen. This one however was pretty cut and dried a fictional novel with historical elements that did not make me feel as much as her other novels did such as Blackbird House.