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Title: The Palace of Curiosities
Author: Rosie Garland
Narrator: Jane Copland
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-28-13
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
A luminous and bewitching debut novel that is perfect for fans of Angela Carter. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. A magical realism delight. Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun.
Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leapsand when Eve is born, the story goes, she didnt cry she meowed and licked her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste? Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroners Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.
Critic Reviews:
The Palace of Curiosities is a jewel-box of a novel, with page after page, scene after scene, layer after layer of treats and surprises. Garland is a real literary talent: definitely an author to watch. (Sarah Waters)
Members Reviews:
WOW!!!!
Wow! What a story to start off with. I couldn't put it down. I stayed up late with it falling out of my hands for 2 nights and even missed a Game of Thrones to read it!
I had the pleasure of hearing Garland read a few passages at a Steam-punk Burlesque night in Dublin. A small venue teeming with people chatting and going back-and-forth from the bar or the smoking-area. But my word, when Rosie read, the room fell silent and you could hear a pin drop. I've never seen an audience so captivated, especially not a raunchy and rude burlesque crowd! But boy the captivation extended to reading the novel solo.
The plot sees a young Eve from conception; tainted as it is with the blood of a rebellious circus lion. In a sort of call-and-response, Eve's narrative is answered alternately by that of Abel: a man pulled from the sewer that was the Thames in the 1800s and who struggles to keep his memories for longer than a day at a time. Both narrators struggle with themselves â Eve with her future and Abel with his past. They navigate a treacherous (and lecherous) terrain of the city, voluptuous even in it's debauchery. Eve can accept herself as The Lion Faced Girl of her husband's Side Show, but knows that society is still cruel, and even intimately she is not taken seriously as a woman. Abel is not taken seriously at all. He may look normal but he is seen as a half-wit, and when his internal truth is glimpsed at it horrifies all who see it, including himself.
I would be so voluptuous my swains would faint away at the sight of me; I would braid ribbons into my beard, file my teeth to glittering points and hunt men for sport; pluck a hundred peacocks and sew their eyes into my coat; plume my dress with the sapphire sheen of magpie tail-feather. I would be the Woman Beast, fearful and beautiful .. I would bide my time: be sweet and quiet as a kitten. Lap at my saucer of milk and pretend myself brow-beaten, meek and obedient. .. I would beat him at his own game.
