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A review by aceinit
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
3.0
The writing in this novel is absolutely beautiful and paints an elegant, mesmerizing picture. However, while the feel of the novel is superb, the story itself is a little bland, a lot of predictable and resolves everything a little too neatly and efficiently.
Time is fluid, and I'm still trying to figure out precisely how long an enormous dead fish and, especially, a certain spoiler, are stored in a certain basement between the time they are discovered and the time the latter thing is returned to its proper place. Days? Weeks? It is difficult to tell, and in some ways the story suffers for it.
The fact that half the novel is unnecessarily written in italics is an oddity as well. For the flashback portions, I'm fine with it, but why this continues once the story is firmly in the present is beyond me.
I am also not sure why so many people insist on comparing this novel to The Night Circus. They are very much not the same thing at all. Not remotely close to the same thing.
Time is fluid, and I'm still trying to figure out precisely how long an enormous dead fish and, especially, a certain spoiler, are stored in a certain basement between the time they are discovered and the time the latter thing is returned to its proper place. Days? Weeks? It is difficult to tell, and in some ways the story suffers for it.
The fact that half the novel is unnecessarily written in italics is an oddity as well. For the flashback portions, I'm fine with it, but why this continues once the story is firmly in the present is beyond me.
I am also not sure why so many people insist on comparing this novel to The Night Circus. They are very much not the same thing at all. Not remotely close to the same thing.