Men did such things as this in dreams: approached a dark house filled with treasure, sank into a sea of true love, traveled with wolves and wonders on a warm night.
Alice Hoffman, The Museum of Extraordinary Things
Coralie has grown up in The Museum of Extraordinary Things on Coney Island early in the 20th century. Born with webbed fingers and with an ability to hold her breath for long periods of time, she becomes one of the "freaks" put on display by her father, Professor Sardie.
Sadie searches during the off-season for new freaks and oddities. Sometimes he manufactures his own, as when he finds the body of a girl that he hopes to turn into a mermaid, after using Coralie to create mermaid sightings in the river.
As she gets older the girl begins to discover her father's secrets, and they are not pretty. Eventually she develops secrets of her own, as when on one of her river swims she spies a young man on the shore and falls instantly in love.
Eddie, too, has a troubled relationship with his father. He works partly as a photographer and partly as a finder of missing persons. His estranged father surprises him by recommending him to a man searching for his daughter, missing since a tragic factory fire. Was she lost in the fire or not? If she's dead, where is her body?
His search, of course, leads him to the museum and to Coralie, while Hoffman's novel turns briefly from a love story into a murder mystery. At the dramatic end to the story, there's another tragic fire that destroys many of the Coney Island amusements. Both fires really happened, even though the rest of the novel is fiction.
My only complaint about this fine book is that nearly half of it is printed in italics, not comfortable to read in large portions. Still it is not all that hard to read and does not seriously hamper the overall appeal of this novel of extraordinary things.
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