glendaleereads's review against another edition
4.0
I liked the world that Schaffert created and I fell in love with Ferret instantly...and grew frustrated with him as well. I didn't really understand the love he had for Cecily because at times she seemed so unlovable. However I liked the whole Fair aspect of the story and its history and the characters we meet. Which brings me to one of the things I disliked about this novel, which was that the secondary characters were so underdeveloped which made me sad.
Especially when it came to Cecily I was left wanting to know more of who she was and sometimes I felt like her love for Ferret was not real. I feel like if I would have known more about her character then I could have understood her better. Same goes for Wakefield and his twin sister who were mysteries that needed more developing and Schaffert didn't give us that which weakens this novel.
Overall I give it four stars because this was a story that truly captivated me from the beginning of the page, and I couldn't put it down.
Especially when it came to Cecily I was left wanting to know more of who she was and sometimes I felt like her love for Ferret was not real. I feel like if I would have known more about her character then I could have understood her better. Same goes for Wakefield and his twin sister who were mysteries that needed more developing and Schaffert didn't give us that which weakens this novel.
Overall I give it four stars because this was a story that truly captivated me from the beginning of the page, and I couldn't put it down.
teriboop's review against another edition
4.0
Imagine waking to your house a shakin' and realizing it is covered by a deflated hot air balloon. The Egan sisters find themselves rescuing the man in the basket, who has an incredible story to tell. Set in 1898-1899 during the Omaha World's Fair (technically the Trans-Mississippi & International Exposition), Timothy Schaffert's The Swan Gondola is a story about love and longing in a time of chaos. Ferret Skerritt, a struggling ventriloquist, chronicles his story of falling in love with the eccentric Cecily whom he briefly meets during a stage performance in Omaha. He follows her about town, finally tracking her down at the fair. He begins to woo her but life is not all that it appears in the "new white city" of the fair. This story has a full cast of bizarre and crazy characters. The main character, Ferret, is inspired by the Wizard in Frank L. Baum's The Wizard of Oz.
I really liked the overall story, although the first half of the story seemed to drag on a bit. However, at that cathartic moment, the book becomes a page turner. I think it's worth sticking with it and I loved the ending.
I really liked the overall story, although the first half of the story seemed to drag on a bit. However, at that cathartic moment, the book becomes a page turner. I think it's worth sticking with it and I loved the ending.
riedlmatt's review against another edition
4.0
Let me be clear. I am a hopeless romantic. And if you’re like me, Timothy Schaffert’s “The Swan Gondola” is perfect for you, too.
The story, set largely at and around the events of the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair, is a delight. Schaffert’s plot revolves around Ferret Skerritt, a ventriloquist on the midway of the fair. He falls in love with a traveling actress named Cecily, and the two spend their summer together against the fair’s gleaming backdrop. When William Wakefield, the well-to-do Omaha businessman spearheading the fair, also takes an interest in Cecily, Ferret is left trying to pick up the pieces of his summer.
Ferret’s story is a believable, touching and occasionally maddening tale of love, loss, and life afterward.
Just like the fair, Ferret’s life is heartbreakingly ephemeral. His story won’t have you openly weeping, though don’t be surprised if you do shed a tear or two at his misfortune.
It’s an intriguing plotline befitting of his fancifully-imagined setting.
Schaffert conjures up a vaudeville world of magic, love and wonder – a world that, once entrenched in it, is incredibly hard to put down.
His cast of characters is delightfully refreshing, from the carnies Ferret hangs out with, to Wakefield. In the novel, Wakefield plays a Gatsby-esque character, the ultra-rich man who has come into his wealth somewhat dubiously. He’s that odd antagonist that you find yourself hating in one chapter and feeling pity for by the next.
His characters come across so real that I found myself wishing, almost to the point of believing, Ferret Skerritt was real, if for no other reason than to prove that magic was at one time real.
As a whole, the novel is an exercise in the fragility of love and life in general, and it’s not one to be missed.
I’d hesitate to call this steampunk literature, but it certainly has a few trappings of the genre – wire-strung aerial waltzes, tornado-generating machines, and women who wear red-tinted glasses to “calm their ovaries,” according to their iridologists’ prescription.
At 464 pages, the book seems a tad overlong, especially when reading the earlier sections, which I found struggled a bit with pacing issues. Personally, I was not hooked on it until about 125 pages in, which is a long way to read for someone only mildly curious in its plot. However, the plot does pick up significantly about halfway through.
It’s a rewarding book to finish, though its denouement came on rather quickly – too quickly for my tastes. I found myself flipping through the last few pages of the novel, trying to ferret out even a paragraph more of conclusion before the author’s notes. It leaves quite a bit to the reader’s imagination, as some major plot points seem only halfway resolved.
Overall, I highly recommend this novel, though make sure to dedicate enough time to reading the first hundred pages or so in one sitting. After that, you’ll be hooked, and you will not come away disappointed.
The story, set largely at and around the events of the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair, is a delight. Schaffert’s plot revolves around Ferret Skerritt, a ventriloquist on the midway of the fair. He falls in love with a traveling actress named Cecily, and the two spend their summer together against the fair’s gleaming backdrop. When William Wakefield, the well-to-do Omaha businessman spearheading the fair, also takes an interest in Cecily, Ferret is left trying to pick up the pieces of his summer.
Ferret’s story is a believable, touching and occasionally maddening tale of love, loss, and life afterward.
Just like the fair, Ferret’s life is heartbreakingly ephemeral. His story won’t have you openly weeping, though don’t be surprised if you do shed a tear or two at his misfortune.
It’s an intriguing plotline befitting of his fancifully-imagined setting.
Schaffert conjures up a vaudeville world of magic, love and wonder – a world that, once entrenched in it, is incredibly hard to put down.
His cast of characters is delightfully refreshing, from the carnies Ferret hangs out with, to Wakefield. In the novel, Wakefield plays a Gatsby-esque character, the ultra-rich man who has come into his wealth somewhat dubiously. He’s that odd antagonist that you find yourself hating in one chapter and feeling pity for by the next.
His characters come across so real that I found myself wishing, almost to the point of believing, Ferret Skerritt was real, if for no other reason than to prove that magic was at one time real.
As a whole, the novel is an exercise in the fragility of love and life in general, and it’s not one to be missed.
I’d hesitate to call this steampunk literature, but it certainly has a few trappings of the genre – wire-strung aerial waltzes, tornado-generating machines, and women who wear red-tinted glasses to “calm their ovaries,” according to their iridologists’ prescription.
At 464 pages, the book seems a tad overlong, especially when reading the earlier sections, which I found struggled a bit with pacing issues. Personally, I was not hooked on it until about 125 pages in, which is a long way to read for someone only mildly curious in its plot. However, the plot does pick up significantly about halfway through.
It’s a rewarding book to finish, though its denouement came on rather quickly – too quickly for my tastes. I found myself flipping through the last few pages of the novel, trying to ferret out even a paragraph more of conclusion before the author’s notes. It leaves quite a bit to the reader’s imagination, as some major plot points seem only halfway resolved.
Overall, I highly recommend this novel, though make sure to dedicate enough time to reading the first hundred pages or so in one sitting. After that, you’ll be hooked, and you will not come away disappointed.
dkpalmer13's review
I'll come back to it at some point. Right now it just doesn't hold my attention.
ury949's review against another edition
2.0
The setting is this book's redeeming quality and what made it worth finishing. 1889 Omaha World's Fair: there's rich folks and poor, ruthless spending, politics, grand glittering buildings with secret doors for the street rats to stay out of sights. Theater troops with crafted costumes, ruffles, glittering crushed glass, dredging skirts, animal bones, face paint. They drink, deceive, divine, pick pockets, protest, and yet they all have hearts and make the heart of the fair; it is so fun to imagine every stinking corner of it.
Otherwise this is a tragic love story that's too thin for the tragedy to really take hold. The last third is especially long when Ferret lets his life scatter, the reader, similarly, begins to not really care any more. At some point about halfway through, I realized that nothing was going to work out, really, and if it did, it wouldn't be because Ferret deserved it in any way, and no great plot twist really pulled the story out of that doldrum. Sorry for that disappointing review, but if you do read this story, read it for the beautifully rich fair scenes, it made me want to be there.
Otherwise this is a tragic love story that's too thin for the tragedy to really take hold. The last third is especially long when Ferret lets his life scatter, the reader, similarly, begins to not really care any more. At some point about halfway through, I realized that nothing was going to work out, really, and if it did, it wouldn't be because Ferret deserved it in any way, and no great plot twist really pulled the story out of that doldrum. Sorry for that disappointing review, but if you do read this story, read it for the beautifully rich fair scenes, it made me want to be there.
fictionfan's review
4.0
Roll up! Roll up!
One day, just as the Omaha World Fair of 1898 draws to a close, two elderly sisters are sitting quietly in their Nebraska farmhouse when an extraordinary event occurs – a hot-air balloon crashes onto their roof. In it is Ferret Skerritt, ventriloquist and magician. He has survived but with a badly broken leg which means that he has to stay in the farmhouse while he recovers – an intrusion the old ladies find a welcome break from their dull routine. They ask him for his story and he is at first reluctant to tell them, instead telling us, the readers. We hear about his early life as an orphan, why he became a ventriloquist, his fascination with the World Fair, his puppet Oscar. And most of all, we learn about his great love for Cecily, an actress also working in the Fair. Finally, we will learn why he was in the hot-air balloon on the day of the crash...
By all rights I should have hated this one. Mostly it’s a romance, with much sighing over Cecily’s many perfections, and it has generous hints of the kind of trendy liberal political correctness that normally has me running a mile. But the writing is gorgeous and all the stuff about the World Fair is wonderful. I kept expecting to reach a point where the love aspect got too much for me, especially when in the later stages it takes on a kind of ghostly, mystical element, but it kept my attention to the end, and I was well content to gloss over the relative weakness of the plot and its too tidy resolution.
As well as Cecily and Ferret, there’s a cast of characters who would be eccentric in most lifestyles but who are well and believably drawn as the street entertainers, small-time actors and grifters who haunt the periphery of the Fair. August is Ferret’s best friend – a gay half-caste Indian (using the terminology of the time) who is madly in love with Ferret but knows his love will never be returned. Billy Wakefield is a rich man with a tragic past which somehow fails to make him sympathetic – he’s by no means a stock baddie, but he’s a man who is used to getting his own way regardless of who may get hurt in the process. Cecily works in a company of actors who are performing in the House of Horrors – Cecily herself playing Marie Antoinette being beheaded many times a day for the gruesome delight of the paying customers. And the Nebraskan sisters have their own peculiarities, such as their intention to build a kind of temple on their ground with Ferret as an unlikely prophet.
The characterisation is more whimsical than profound, and Cecily herself is an enigma, to me at least. I found her irritating and not a particularly loveable person, but everyone seems to love her anyway. The story, which looks as if it’s going to be a straightforward romance at first, takes off in an unexpected direction halfway through. I don’t want to include spoilers so I won’t say more on that, except that every time I thought I’d got a handle on where the story was going Schaffert would surprise me – not with shocks and twists, but with an almost fairy-tale like quality of unreality, or illusion.
For me, the Fair itself was the star of the show. Schaffert shows all the surface glamour, and all the hidden tawdriness beneath: the Grand Court where the rich play, the midway for the common herd. He shows the unofficial street entertainers, the whores, the drunks, the sellers of obscene photographs, the many ways to fleece the gullible. But there’s a feeling that the open grifting and true friendships on midway are somehow more honest than the insincerity among the rich, where friendships are superficial and people live for scandal and gossip. Schaffert’s plot runs the full length of the Fair, so that we see it from its dazzling opening with all the buildings white and shining in the sun, to its close, when the veneer is already peeling off, glamour gone, showing the cheap shabbiness beneath and the last fair people left stealing anything they can before they leave.
I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to read this one – an odd one, but a surprise winner.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
One day, just as the Omaha World Fair of 1898 draws to a close, two elderly sisters are sitting quietly in their Nebraska farmhouse when an extraordinary event occurs – a hot-air balloon crashes onto their roof. In it is Ferret Skerritt, ventriloquist and magician. He has survived but with a badly broken leg which means that he has to stay in the farmhouse while he recovers – an intrusion the old ladies find a welcome break from their dull routine. They ask him for his story and he is at first reluctant to tell them, instead telling us, the readers. We hear about his early life as an orphan, why he became a ventriloquist, his fascination with the World Fair, his puppet Oscar. And most of all, we learn about his great love for Cecily, an actress also working in the Fair. Finally, we will learn why he was in the hot-air balloon on the day of the crash...
By all rights I should have hated this one. Mostly it’s a romance, with much sighing over Cecily’s many perfections, and it has generous hints of the kind of trendy liberal political correctness that normally has me running a mile. But the writing is gorgeous and all the stuff about the World Fair is wonderful. I kept expecting to reach a point where the love aspect got too much for me, especially when in the later stages it takes on a kind of ghostly, mystical element, but it kept my attention to the end, and I was well content to gloss over the relative weakness of the plot and its too tidy resolution.
I didn’t yet know that this was the actress not listed in the program, that this was that Sessaly, the “violet-eyed trollop” of Opium and Vanities. Her eyes were not violet, after all – they were amber. They were the color of candied ginger or a slice of cinnamon cake. Faded paper, polished leather, a brandied apricot. Orange-peel tea. I considered them, imagining the letters I would write to her. Pipe tobacco, perhaps. A honey lozenge, an autumn leaf. I would look through books of poetry, not to thieve but to avoid. Dear Sessaly, I thought later that night, not actually with pen to paper but lying on my back, writing the words in the air with my finger, let me say nothing to you that’s already been said.
As well as Cecily and Ferret, there’s a cast of characters who would be eccentric in most lifestyles but who are well and believably drawn as the street entertainers, small-time actors and grifters who haunt the periphery of the Fair. August is Ferret’s best friend – a gay half-caste Indian (using the terminology of the time) who is madly in love with Ferret but knows his love will never be returned. Billy Wakefield is a rich man with a tragic past which somehow fails to make him sympathetic – he’s by no means a stock baddie, but he’s a man who is used to getting his own way regardless of who may get hurt in the process. Cecily works in a company of actors who are performing in the House of Horrors – Cecily herself playing Marie Antoinette being beheaded many times a day for the gruesome delight of the paying customers. And the Nebraskan sisters have their own peculiarities, such as their intention to build a kind of temple on their ground with Ferret as an unlikely prophet.
The characterisation is more whimsical than profound, and Cecily herself is an enigma, to me at least. I found her irritating and not a particularly loveable person, but everyone seems to love her anyway. The story, which looks as if it’s going to be a straightforward romance at first, takes off in an unexpected direction halfway through. I don’t want to include spoilers so I won’t say more on that, except that every time I thought I’d got a handle on where the story was going Schaffert would surprise me – not with shocks and twists, but with an almost fairy-tale like quality of unreality, or illusion.
I can see your absence everywhere, in everything. I could look at a rose, but instead of seeing the rose, I would see you not holding it. I look at the moonlight, and there you are, not in it.
For me, the Fair itself was the star of the show. Schaffert shows all the surface glamour, and all the hidden tawdriness beneath: the Grand Court where the rich play, the midway for the common herd. He shows the unofficial street entertainers, the whores, the drunks, the sellers of obscene photographs, the many ways to fleece the gullible. But there’s a feeling that the open grifting and true friendships on midway are somehow more honest than the insincerity among the rich, where friendships are superficial and people live for scandal and gossip. Schaffert’s plot runs the full length of the Fair, so that we see it from its dazzling opening with all the buildings white and shining in the sun, to its close, when the veneer is already peeling off, glamour gone, showing the cheap shabbiness beneath and the last fair people left stealing anything they can before they leave.
I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to read this one – an odd one, but a surprise winner.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
readbookswithbecca's review against another edition
3.0
This was mostly good. A little weird. But mostly good.
lovelyjanelle13's review against another edition
4.0
This book had me hooked from start to finish, the twists just kept coming. I recommend it for anyone looking for a love story, heartbreak, history, and maybe a little something else lurking from the great beyond.
sanaastoria's review against another edition
4.0
[4.5 Stars] This book was both what I expected and wanted and exactly what I didn't. Rather than reminding me of The Night Circus, it really reminded me of Moulin Rouge and the Wizard of Oz. It was not nearly so exuberant and bright and filled with energy as the two I previously mentioned, but it had some similar qualities. This book reads like a dream, like a simple story of love and loss and finding happiness and moving forwards.
I was hooked from the beginning by the writing and by the characters. It was easy to fall in love with our hero Ferret Skerrit. Cecily I had a little more trouble falling in love with, but I did eventually. This book does not try to make itself into this grand love story, but at the same time it does. I'm not sure what else to say. I loved this book so much, but the ending let me down slightly. This would have been a 5 star rating had it not ended in such an anti-climatic way. I expected more and was thoroughly shocked when I turned the page to discover I had finished the book.
I want more. I feel as if this book is wisps of that summer and Ferret and Cecily and everything that happened. They come together to make an enchanting story, but it still leaves me wanting more and just I'm not quite sure. It didn't leave me satisfied, but I enjoyed the ride while it lasted.
I loved this and I didn't. I don't know. I'm torn. I wish it hadn't ended in such a way, but at the same time it was kind of perfect wasn't it?
I was hooked from the beginning by the writing and by the characters. It was easy to fall in love with our hero Ferret Skerrit. Cecily I had a little more trouble falling in love with, but I did eventually. This book does not try to make itself into this grand love story, but at the same time it does. I'm not sure what else to say. I loved this book so much, but the ending let me down slightly. This would have been a 5 star rating had it not ended in such an anti-climatic way. I expected more and was thoroughly shocked when I turned the page to discover I had finished the book.
I want more. I feel as if this book is wisps of that summer and Ferret and Cecily and everything that happened. They come together to make an enchanting story, but it still leaves me wanting more and just I'm not quite sure. It didn't leave me satisfied, but I enjoyed the ride while it lasted.
I loved this and I didn't. I don't know. I'm torn. I wish it hadn't ended in such a way, but at the same time it was kind of perfect wasn't it?