THE MUSEUM OF EXTRAORDINARY THINGS (2014)
Alice Hoffman
Scribner
978-145163560, 368 pp.
* * * * *
I've long enjoyed Alice Hoffman's novels, though I always
thought her just a notch or two above "guilty pleasures." Many of her
previous books, including her famed Practical
Magic, delve into the supernatural but even her darkness had a New Age glow
and her style was literate, but not literary. Until now. The Museum of Extraordinary Things is set in
turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York and its labyrinthine plot twists and
rich detail are evocative of works from E. L. Doctorow and Caleb Carr. Throw in
a heavy dose of Jane Eyre, a dollop
of Elephant Man, incendiary tragedy,
and several, odd romances, and you've got The
Museum of Extraordinary Things. Sort of.
New York was a very different place around 1900. Coney
Island, where much of the book is set, had become a playground, but it was also
akin to the Wild West whose protean energy conjured seaside analogies to Mark
Twain's descriptions of the Virginia City, Nevada, of his young adulthood.
Coney Island featured tawdry dancehalls, saloons, vice dens, and amusements
parks, the latter a strange mix of glittery new technology (like roller
coasters and electric lights) and down-market freak-shows. Venture any distance from the developed
strips, and Brooklyn became farms, marshes, and a repository of homesteaders
and outcasts. In Hoffman's novel, it's also the home of the namesake museum,
presided over by one Professor Sardie, who passes himself off as a learned man whose
'attractions' such as Goat Boy, a 100-year-old giant turtle, Bee Woman, and Malia
the Butterfly are packaged as 'scientific' and 'authentic,' not like those
fakes peddled by Barnum or the hucksters who've just opened nearby Dreamland
Amusement Park. Except, of course, they're not. One of his star attractions is
his own daughter, Coralie, who was born with webbing between several of her
fingers and swims like the mermaid he bills her to be. Just add a convincing
tail costume and voila!
Coralie's story soon intersects with that of Eddie, born Ezekiel
Cohen, who reinvents himself and loses his faith after witnessing the shame of
his father's presumed suicide attempt. We cross the East River to Manhattan,
where the Lower East Side isn't any tamer than Coney Island. It's pretty easy
for Eddie to disappear into a world of pick pockets, gangs, and tenement house
petty crime–all of which he samples before becoming, first, a street detective
for a man named Hochman who allows himself to be considered a seer and Jewish
version of Sherlock Holmes; and then assistant and heir to photographer Moses
Levy, another lapsed Jew. Among the members of the Jewish community, Eddie is a
contemptuous apostate. In other words, he's as marginal as the unfortunates
displayed in Sardie's museum.
Here's what I'll give you to whet your appetite: a Hudson
River sea monster, a missing girl, an erudite Wolfman, a stolen watch, a Dutch
hermit, an actual wolf, a Pitbull, horrors real and imagined, and a cast of
characters with more secrets than the CIA. Real people also pop in and out of
the novel—including Walt Whitman, Alfred Stieglitz, and Seth Low. This is a
book about faith lost and regained, trust given and withdrawn, surface ugliness
and inner beauty (and its reverse), and the roots you can prune and those that
go too deep to dig out. The denouement comes in 1911 in a chain set off by two
spectacular and deadly fires, that of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and that
of Dreamland. That fine piece of crafting is one of many in a novel that
rockets between horror and hope. It is a triumph from start to finish. I was
wrong—Alice Hoffman is a major
literary figure.
–Rob Weir
PS—For me, this novel surpasses my previous favorite Alice
Hoffman work, The River King (2000). The
latter is not one of her better-known works, but if you like Museum of Extraordinary Things, pick up The River King.
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