sarahcoller's review against another edition
2.0
I didn't enjoy this one very much---mainly because it was just so extremely boring. The set up took about 300 pages, leaving me with about 50 pages of an actual story that I breezed through in about 20 minutes. The way it was written is distracting: lots of jumping back and forth between narrators, first and third person narratives, and bouncing around the timeline.
The ending is obvious and anticlimactic. The parts I didn't guess very early on were not super exciting either. I'm not usually one for magical realism but I think a little more focus on the fantastical in this story would have made it much more palatable.
The one thing I did really enjoy about the story were all of the historical bits and references to my favorite time in history.
The ending is obvious and anticlimactic. The parts I didn't guess very early on were not super exciting either. I'm not usually one for magical realism but I think a little more focus on the fantastical in this story would have made it much more palatable.
The one thing I did really enjoy about the story were all of the historical bits and references to my favorite time in history.
kendrashea's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
cydneydaniel's review against another edition
4.0
This book has given me mixed feelings. It was beautiful and descriptive, and amazing history was woven into the story skillfully. The book was lovely in terms of how it was written. I love the words she used and how quickly she made my heart break with just one sentence. The story was a little slow, though, and I had trouble believing the romance part of the story. However, The Museum of Extraordinary Things was more than romance, and the rest of the book was very much worth the uninteresting love story. The relationship between Maureen and Cora was more interesting to me than the relationship between Eddie and Cora.
Museum of Extraordinary Things walks the line between historical fiction and fantasy, which is right up my alley. It was lovely and sad, but the ending was just how I think endings should be.
A couple of my favorite quotes from this book:
"Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith." (Page 57)
"Love happens in such a way. It walks up to you, and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become." (Pg 255)
Museum of Extraordinary Things walks the line between historical fiction and fantasy, which is right up my alley. It was lovely and sad, but the ending was just how I think endings should be.
A couple of my favorite quotes from this book:
"Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith." (Page 57)
"Love happens in such a way. It walks up to you, and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become." (Pg 255)
shrike_'s review against another edition
1.0
To me, magical realism is a genre that takes just the right story and voice to land beautifully. And while I desperately wanted that for 'The Museum of Extraordinary Things', I just don't think it pulled it off.
This is one of the rare books I had to force myself to finish, setting a page amount for each day and soldiering through before I could turn my attention to something else. I'm writing this review with some distance between me and the novel, and I couldn't tell you a damn interesting thing about either of the main characters.
I found the both of them impossible to relate to or love, and as such their relationship with one another couldn't hold my interest in the slightest. The pacing of it felt peculiar, and as if they met and immediately were prepared to be tethered to one another for the rest of their lives.
I'm sure it's a beautiful story for the right audience, unfortunately that wasn't me.
This is one of the rare books I had to force myself to finish, setting a page amount for each day and soldiering through before I could turn my attention to something else. I'm writing this review with some distance between me and the novel, and I couldn't tell you a damn interesting thing about either of the main characters.
I found the both of them impossible to relate to or love, and as such their relationship with one another couldn't hold my interest in the slightest. The pacing of it felt peculiar, and as if they met and immediately were prepared to be tethered to one another for the rest of their lives.
I'm sure it's a beautiful story for the right audience, unfortunately that wasn't me.
yeoldeeclair's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
andreayoung's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
wanderaven's review against another edition
4.0
I fell in love with Alice Hoffman when I was still a young adult; before her young adult books, before creating stories with magical realism threaded through them was a more fashionable thing to do. Truth be told, I haven’t read as many of her books as I still want to do, but I’ve read a fair enough number of them to have been both incredibly excited when provided an ARC for this book by Scribner, and also confused about some of my disappointment with this story.
Another reviewer on goodreads described the book in this way: “It’s everything that I wanted Night Circus to be. It’s everything Water for Elephants aspired to be and just wasn’t…” and I wholeheartedly agree. I disliked Water for Elephants and couldn’t finish it. I liked Night Circus and look forward to reading what Morgenstern does next, but for me it definitely wasn’t the glorious book that so many other readers enthuse it to be.
I was daunted by Hoffman's choice, in this book, to switch back and forth between first person and third person narratives in each chapter/section. This wasn't first person character of one protagonist, and then third of another, but rather each section contained the first person thoughts and then third person perspective for either Coralie or Eddie. I... didn't really like this. In fact, the effect was so jarring, that I frequently felt like the two different parts in each section were written by different authors. I'm sure that some of this was intentional, so that the first person felt like the character's own thoughts, but I found that, most of the time, I was entranced by and found very beautiful and poetic language within the first person narratives. Then the third person, signaled by non-italicized font, frequently felt to me like the writing of another author, whose name I won't mention here but has been frequently hailed as a successor to Hoffman in the world of contemporary magical realism, and whose writing I was at first excited to experience but which shortly turned to a major disappointment. Immature, copycat writing. I'm not saying Hoffman's writing in the third person for this book is that, exactly, but it did remind more of that author's writing than what I'm used to with Hoffman. This narrative also became confusing for me, as I was trying to figure out whether certain events were happening in the current story or were flashbacks.
I did find the most disappointing sentences in this book more magical than anything I read in Water for Elephants, and the relationship more romantic and affecting than that in Night Circus. This, despite that I hated that Coralie fell in love with Eddie literally at first sight - she did not speak to him, did not touch him, had absolutely no sense of his intelligence or kindness or life, and yet she walked away declaring herself to be in love with him. That, to me, is lust at first sight, perhaps, but this certainly wasn't how the character described her feelings. I'm aware that Hoffman now writes some young adult novels, and perhaps this instant infatuation, and little to no development of desire within the romance in the story is appropriate there but I want something more adult and authentic feeling from what I understand to be an adult novel. I'm not saying, even, that they have to have sex on the pages or anything, just that to keep them within the realm that she does within the story makes the romance seem less authentic, and as if the characters are being too Disney fairy-tale like and it makes them feel less real.
Hmmm. So. Giving this book four stars because I still love Hoffman, still love the sentences and words she uses, still love the worlds she creates, despite the complaints above. If it weren't for so many beautiful lines and images contained within the first person (journaled?) narratives, I would've certainly dropped it down to three stars. Oh, and four - count 'em, FOUR dogs gracing the pages certainly doesn't hurt (speaking of which, I'm hard-pressed to believe that they would've already been calling pitbulls pitbulls at this time in history? - I may be totally wrong and couldn't find evidence online to either confirm or refute this...)
Another reviewer on goodreads described the book in this way: “It’s everything that I wanted Night Circus to be. It’s everything Water for Elephants aspired to be and just wasn’t…” and I wholeheartedly agree. I disliked Water for Elephants and couldn’t finish it. I liked Night Circus and look forward to reading what Morgenstern does next, but for me it definitely wasn’t the glorious book that so many other readers enthuse it to be.
I was daunted by Hoffman's choice, in this book, to switch back and forth between first person and third person narratives in each chapter/section. This wasn't first person character of one protagonist, and then third of another, but rather each section contained the first person thoughts and then third person perspective for either Coralie or Eddie. I... didn't really like this. In fact, the effect was so jarring, that I frequently felt like the two different parts in each section were written by different authors. I'm sure that some of this was intentional, so that the first person felt like the character's own thoughts, but I found that, most of the time, I was entranced by and found very beautiful and poetic language within the first person narratives. Then the third person, signaled by non-italicized font, frequently felt to me like the writing of another author, whose name I won't mention here but has been frequently hailed as a successor to Hoffman in the world of contemporary magical realism, and whose writing I was at first excited to experience but which shortly turned to a major disappointment. Immature, copycat writing. I'm not saying Hoffman's writing in the third person for this book is that, exactly, but it did remind more of that author's writing than what I'm used to with Hoffman. This narrative also became confusing for me, as I was trying to figure out whether certain events were happening in the current story or were flashbacks.
I did find the most disappointing sentences in this book more magical than anything I read in Water for Elephants, and the relationship more romantic and affecting than that in Night Circus. This, despite that I hated that Coralie fell in love with Eddie literally at first sight - she did not speak to him, did not touch him, had absolutely no sense of his intelligence or kindness or life, and yet she walked away declaring herself to be in love with him. That, to me, is lust at first sight, perhaps, but this certainly wasn't how the character described her feelings. I'm aware that Hoffman now writes some young adult novels, and perhaps this instant infatuation, and little to no development of desire within the romance in the story is appropriate there but I want something more adult and authentic feeling from what I understand to be an adult novel. I'm not saying, even, that they have to have sex on the pages or anything, just that to keep them within the realm that she does within the story makes the romance seem less authentic, and as if the characters are being too Disney fairy-tale like and it makes them feel less real.
Hmmm. So. Giving this book four stars because I still love Hoffman, still love the sentences and words she uses, still love the worlds she creates, despite the complaints above. If it weren't for so many beautiful lines and images contained within the first person (journaled?) narratives, I would've certainly dropped it down to three stars. Oh, and four - count 'em, FOUR dogs gracing the pages certainly doesn't hurt (speaking of which, I'm hard-pressed to believe that they would've already been calling pitbulls pitbulls at this time in history? - I may be totally wrong and couldn't find evidence online to either confirm or refute this...)
marshmallowbooks's review against another edition
3.0
I read in one of the comments about this book a question about how in the world anyone could like a book that told of such tragedy - the tragedy in this story being the burning of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the many girls and women who lost their lives because they were locked in their workrooms. I would hope it is obvious that I don't say I liked this book because of the historical events that it recounts. To be honest, I'm not even sure the plot itself was my favorite. When I finished listening to it, and was picking the star rating for this review, I couldn't put my finger on any specific aspect of the plot that had me eager to listen to the whole thing. But there was something about it that did...
And I realized it was the language and the narrator. While I wonder about the plot line as I look back at it, there isn't a lot that stands out, but the story was so well told, the words chosen to describe everything were absolutely the right words. When read by Judith Light - aka Angela from the show "Who's the Boss?" - the words became hauntingly lyrical, much more so than I think they would have been if I'd been reading the book myself. She was a phenomenal reader - and I feel like I have discovered that she is the reason I kept listening.
That said, the story is not terrible by any means. It follows two different characters on very different paths: Eddie Cohen who ran away from his father and left his Jewish beliefs behind; and Coralie Sardie who is one of the exhibits in her father's Museum of Extraordinary Things. For some time, there is only a hint of what will bring these two characters' paths to a crossing point, although I felt like it took quite a bit of time before it was clear how exactly that might happen. That must be good storytelling.
I didn't really find the love story to be very believable, to be honest. It was a little too sudden and completely lacking foundation for me to get swept up by it. But Alice Hoffman sure has away of creating the absolutely most vile monster of a human being that ever called himself a "father." I guess that might have to have a spoiler warning...
And I realized it was the language and the narrator. While I wonder about the plot line as I look back at it, there isn't a lot that stands out, but the story was so well told, the words chosen to describe everything were absolutely the right words. When read by Judith Light - aka Angela from the show "Who's the Boss?" - the words became hauntingly lyrical, much more so than I think they would have been if I'd been reading the book myself. She was a phenomenal reader - and I feel like I have discovered that she is the reason I kept listening.
That said, the story is not terrible by any means. It follows two different characters on very different paths: Eddie Cohen who ran away from his father and left his Jewish beliefs behind; and Coralie Sardie who is one of the exhibits in her father's Museum of Extraordinary Things. For some time, there is only a hint of what will bring these two characters' paths to a crossing point, although I felt like it took quite a bit of time before it was clear how exactly that might happen. That must be good storytelling.
I didn't really find the love story to be very believable, to be honest. It was a little too sudden and completely lacking foundation for me to get swept up by it. But Alice Hoffman sure has away of creating the absolutely most vile monster of a human being that ever called himself a "father." I guess that might have to have a spoiler warning...
melanied01's review against another edition
5.0
My first Alice Hoffman book and it captured me from the very first page. Found the writing beautiful and the history enthralling. Like another review I read, “It’s everything that I wanted Night Circus to be. It’s everything Water for Elephants aspired to be and just wasn’t…”. Though Night Circus is an amazing book...like a piece of art or a beautiful tapestry.