![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Born with webbing between her fingers, Coralie is one of these wonders herself. The Museum is an attraction of the Coney Island of the early 1900s, where rare artifacts and “living wonders” such as sword-swallowers, hot-coal walkers, the Butterfly Girl and Wolfman are on display. Motherless, she grows up with her cold, controlling father, the mastermind behind the Museum of Extraordinary Things. Hoffman begins her tale with Coralie, whose early life reads like a dark fairy tale. Would I be immersed in the “powerful, elegant” and “arresting” work praised by her reviewers? Or would this be the rollicking period yarn promised by the inside flap, featuring a “sizzling, tender, and moving story of young love in tumultuous times” between the daughter of the museum’s “sinister impresario” and a “dashing photographer” hero, amidst the “colorful crowds of heiresses, thugs, and idealists” of old New York? The thoughtful reviews of Hoffman’s work on the back cover sounded a bit at odds with the somewhat hyperbolic jacket copy inside the flap, leading me to wonder what kind of novel I was about to read. As soon as I opened Alice Hoffman’s The Museum of Extraordinary Things, I faced a mystery. ![]()
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