From the Bookshelf of Get Lit - Bettendorf Public Library…

The Museum of Extraordinary Things

Alice Hoffman

Finish date: April 14, 2015

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Apr 07, 2015 Courtney rated it did not like it

Shelves: historical-fiction, get-lit, read-in-2015

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm not even done with this book (about 40 pages to go... ugh), but I'm going to go ahead and say I hated it. I've been skimming since about page 150. So many problems. I don't even know where to start.

What interested me most going in was the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; I thought it may provide an interesting and tragic setting to the book. It's nothing more than a convenient episode to kick of an uninteresting "mystery." The turmoil of the period doesn't really even make it into the book, other t I'm not even done with this book (about 40 pages to go... ugh), but I'm going to go ahead and say I hated it. I've been skimming since about page 150. So many problems. I don't even know where to start.

What interested me most going in was the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; I thought it may provide an interesting and tragic setting to the book. It's nothing more than a convenient episode to kick of an uninteresting "mystery." The turmoil of the period doesn't really even make it into the book, other than the single chapter describing the fire.

OK, fine. So that was only a hook. But then there are all these other historical details that are just plopped into the narrative in a fairly clumsy manner. Like the author really wanted to make sure she included all the things she found in her research, but didn't quite know how to put them in there. As clumsy as these insertions seem, it really felt like Hoffman worked hard to have *just* the perfect sentence before each of the chapter breaks. Seriously, I read some of them randomly to my husband to illustrate how awful and affected they were:

"Yet she could feel her heart banging against her ribs as she ran, letting her know that she was still alive."
"And so it seemed, a soul could be captured after all."
"Or perhaps there is evil in certain people, a streak of meanness that cannot be erased by circumstance or fashioned into something brand new by love."

The story is also really repetitive. Things are described multiple times, as if we've had enough time between their appearances to forget what's happening. Or, more likely, because Hoffman originally had something described in one place and moved it, and didn't bother to clean up the text.

Others things don't add up, are too convenient, or are just beyond belief. Coralie cuts her hand, and Maureen is upset about it, then makes her scrub pans immediately after. Eddie's hand is broken, but he manages to move a coffin out of the basement without anyone noticing. A girl tosses a silver ring (really? A factory worker making barely any money has enough to buy a silver ring?) from the ninth story and it FUSES with the sidewalk. A wolfman manages to get all the way to New York City from Philadelphia without being accosted, but is immediately attacked in the city. The Professor's very convenient diary that spans more than two decades is written in a sort of shorthand code, but contains the entire account (three pages of the book) of his finding of Coralie as a baby that she can read and understand...and then, in case you missed it, it's spelled out that the Professor is not Coralie's father (you know, because we're dense). Maureen shows up, still lactating from a child she's apparently lost, and calm as a cucumber starts nursing a random baby in front of a stranger. Eddie is supposedly very good at finding people and oh-so-observant, except he's a bumbling idiot... who apparently takes loads of snapshots with a glass plate camera he lugs everywhere.

Lastly, the love story just doesn't work. The characters are flat. And the whole Romeo and Juliet, love at first sight thing? I'm not buying it. Ick. Just ick.

I can't wait to be rid of this book and move on to something I can enjoy.

***finished***

Good grief, what a terrible ending. Sappy, overwrought and completely unbelievable. A dog using a breathing tube? A pear tree survives (and apparently a shovel), when everything else around is so engulfed in flames that our heroes can't possibly escape except into a tank of water? Nevermind that other families on the same street seemed to be just fine, without their own tanks to speak of. And that freaking letter just never ended. I'm so glad that Coralie points out in it that she has very fluid handwriting, not that she's finally learned. /sarcasm ...more

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Jan 17, 2015 Erin marked it as started-not-finished

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