Friday, September 4, 2015

Let's Go to the Circus! Book List

Enjoy the circus? Like to read stories that have one in it? Like something different and mysterious? Check out this book list...


1) "Born of Illusion" by Teri Brown

Newly arrived in the exciting Jazz Age–era New York City world of mentalists, mediums and séances, can Anna Van Housen hide her gifts from her jealous mother, even as her visions become more frightening? And is she really Harry Houdini’s illegitimate daughter?

Sixteen-year-old Anna, capable of tricks of illusion and escape and aware of her own growing extrasensory powers, is tired of being an assistant to her mother, Marguerite—a fraud who wants to be the world’s most famous medium. Brown ably depicts the tension between Marguerite’s jealous resentment of her daughter and Anna’s attempts at independence, as well as Anna’s confusion over the romantic intentions of two very different suitors. Indeed, characterization is a strength in this first-person narrative, in which the setting, New York City in the 1920s, is so richly drawn as to become a character in itself. Actual people, organizations and locations from the illusionist scene as well as abundant fashion details of the era immerse readers in rich historical context. Anna, able to communicate with the dead and see visions of the future, must figure out how to extricate both herself and her mother from separate kidnappings and finally learn whom she can trust.

With an eye-catching jacket cover, this wordy mix of magic, history and romance will appeal to fans of Libba Bray. (Historical fantasy. 13 & up)



2) "Madeline and the Gypsies" by Ludwig Bemelmans

Again Madeline! This time the little French orphan takes off with her friend Pepito during a rain storm and finds herself part of a gypsy caravan. For Madeline, the life of the carnival is a distinct relief from the rigors of Miss Clavel's stern if loving discipline at the orphanage. But to the meticulous Miss Clavel, the empty bed in the dormitory is a constant reminder of her missing charge and the need to reclaim her. And Madeline is reclaimed, admitting to herself, finally, that there is a certain satisfaction in being clean, warm, and well looked after. Ludwig Bemelman's whimsical verse and his exuberant color illustrations will delight the ignorant into the world of Madeline and continue to enchant those readers already familiar with Madeline, Madeline's Rescue, and Madeline and the Bad Hat.





3) "That Time I Joined the Circus" by J.J. Howard

After high school senior Lexi’s dad dies, she’s forced to head for Florida, where her long-absent mother might be working for a circus.

Another compelling reason for leaving New York City—besides being evicted from her apartment and kicked out of her private school because she now lacks a parent to sign her in—is that the night of her father’s accident, she slept with her best friend Eli, even though he was dating her other best friend, Bailey. Since Eli didn’t come to her desperately needed rescue after her life started to crumble, she’s pretty certain he’s chosen to stay with Bailey. In Florida, she’s quickly hired by the circus and finds devoted friends among the cast and crew. This makes it easier to ignore the mess her life is now in: no school, her still-missing mother and unresolved issues with Eli. Moving smoothly between chapters set in Florida and flashbacks to the days before her father’s death, debut author Howard effectively depicts an attractive heroine with a notably sarcastic but nonetheless charming attitude. If things fall apart a bit too fast in the beginning and are resolved a little too facilely at the end, Lexi’s narration is entertaining enough to forgive those minor shortcomings. Since Lexi says her “life has a soundtrack,” each chapter begins with pertinent and pithy lyrics with band attributions.

For any reader who ever has felt like running away to join the circus. (Fiction. 12-18)



4) "The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno" by Ellen Bryson

A man living among the oddest specimens of humanity questions his inner desires.

It must have been something, America at the end of the Civil War, and debut novelist Bryson imagines it beautifully in her inspired drama about freaks, showmen and the forces that twist our insides. Opening just after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the curtains part to reveal a sideshow within a spectacle, namely the singular attraction that was Barnum’s American Museum in New York City, owned by narcissistic showman P.T. Barnum. Bryson’s narrator is no mundane manifestation: The titular Fortuno has occupied Barnum’s stable as The World’s Thinnest Man for a decade, playing alongside his gargantuan friend Matina and a host of other “Curiosities.” Fortuno even elucidates the class system among “our kind,” cataloguing True Prodigies that diverge inexorably from humanity; Prodigies, like himself, gifted with implausible proportions; and Exotics whose talents accent their peculiarities. “Lowlifes to codfish aristocrats, they’re all alike,” Matina scoffs. “People want to feel shock, envy, and delight. They just use us to fill them up. Which, by the way, is an impossible task.” But Bartholomew is a wonderful character who doesn’t struggle against his self-image but revels in it, challenging audiences with his bravado. “When you look at me, can’t you understand yourself a bit better?” he asks. “The only difference between us is that I do not hide my inner self.” Into this heady stew Bryson pours both mystery and a love story. Fortuno’s curiosity is piqued late one evening when his master furtively escorts a veiled woman into the palace of marvels. Soon after, tempted by the lure of a new costume, Bartholomew agrees to conspire with his manipulative employer, venturing into Chinatown on secret missions and following Iell, the veiled woman, whose secrets may be the most startling of all her brethren.

A rich tapestry of romance, illusory science, criminal trickery and human intrigue. Let the show begin.



5) "Dreamland" by Kevin Baker

A sprawling doorstopper, set in turn-of-the-century New York. Baker’s work as chief researcher for Harry Evans’s recent The American Century is on generous display here. The various facets of New York and Coney Island, where the ornate park of the title is located, are scribed in intimate detail: the notorious jail The Tombs, City Hall, the Triangle garment factory, immigrant housing, whiskey bars, and strip joints, all are nicely animated. Meanwhile, dozens of characters stroll through these various locales: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung visit New York and observe the vulgarity of America; Trick the Dwarf tells of the bizarre and the humane at Dreamland—the dwarfs and the bearded ladies—which is the most familiar world he knows; and Esther, a garment worker alienated from her immigrant family, takes an active role in the labor movement. Also on hand are Gyp the Blood, a small-time criminal; Big Tim, the Tammany politico, plus Kid Twist and Sadie and Clara. Baker is trying to make larger points—for instance, seeing Dreamland as a grotesquely inspired reflection of New York City—but with so many people wandering across the pages of the novel like extras wearing different costumes, the larger ambitions are swallowed by boredom. We are left with authoritatively described, sometimes brutal scenes of corruption, abuse, depravity, manipulation, and coercion that make up a plot whose purpose is cloudy. Second-timer Baker (Sometimes You See it Coming, 1993) does an excellent job of evoking a time and a place, but the novel fails to transcend the genre of Costume Drama, busy as it is with surfaces and slangs, weather and buildings, workbenches and public speeches: the story projects no center, and it’s too easy to forget why it matters at all.



6) "Big Fish" by Daniel Wallace

An audacious, highly original debut novel, in which a son attempts to resolve the mysteries surrounding his father by re-creating the man’s life as a series of exuberant tall tales. Edward Bloom has grown wealthy running his own import/export business. Restlessly wandering the world, he has returned home to see his wife and son only at rare, unpredictable intervals. Now, however, he’s come home to die, and William is desperate to understand something of his father’s life and character before he vanishes. But his father, an incorrigible jokester, deflects all of his son’s queries with one-liners. A baffled William, waiting for the end, begins to create a series of tall tales in which his enigmatic parent is remade as a paradigmatic American folk hero. Growing up in Alabama as a “strong quiet boy, with a mind of his own,” this mythic version of Edward has an affinity with wild animals and the uncanny. He reads every book in town, tames a lonely giant who has taken to eating the locals— crops and dogs, and hitches a ride on a giant catfish. As a young man he saves a child from an unearthly dog, rescues a lovely water spirit, and returns an enchanted eye to its rightful owner. As a wealthy older man he preserves a small southern town from the rancorous present by becoming its feudal lord. William narrates these stories in a language that nicely mixes the simplicity and tang of the folk tale with a droll, knowing sense of humor. All the episodes seem infused with a defiant, despairing love; in the end, the dying Edward outwits death by transforming himself into (literally) a “big fish,” which his son returns to its ancestral waters. More a series of ingenious sketches than a cohesive novel, but, still, a vigorous updating of the purely American genre of the tall tale—as well as an imaginative, and moving, record of a son’s love for a charming, unknowable father.







7) "The Barnum Museum" by Steven Millhauser

If Millhauser's last novel, the overly long From the Realm of Morpheus (1986), was somewhat self-indulgent, then this new collection of ten intoxicating stories restores him to the more accessible scale of his last marvelous collection, In the Penny Arcade (1985). Millhauser's concerns remain heady--his literate narratives are often allusive, dreamlike homages to his masters. ""Alice, Falling,"" a full account of her descent into the rabbit hole, adds to our understanding of Carroll's masterpiece. Likewise, ""Klassik Komix #1,"" a comic-book version of ""The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock""--described panel by panel--interprets the poem cleverly as it comments upon the relation between high and low culture. And in ""The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad,"" Millhauser--a high modernist Scheherazade--provides scholarly commentary to his extra voyage, which Sinbad, now in his anecdotage, makes up from the previous seven. The world of illusion, along with the illusory nature of the world, continues to fuel Millhauser's hyper-imagination. Some pieces sacrifice story for thick description: ""The Barnum Museum"" is a detailed guided-tour of this many-roomed monument to the ""monstrous and fantastic""--a place that fully explores the uses (and abuses) of enchantment. Other magic here happens on a more human scale: In ""Behind the Blue Curtain,"" a boy on his first trip alone to the movies wanders behind the screen and finds endless rooms full of transparent actors; and in ""Rain,"" a man caught in a torrential downpour is literally washed away into a colorless smudge. The two longest stories, which frame the collection, are among the most dazzling: ""A Game of Clue"" juxtaposes a domestic scene of game-playing with the world that exists within the game of ""Clue"" itself--a tale of passion and desire, wholly imagined by Millhauser, that emotionally parallels the main story but ends when the board is folded. ""Eisenheim the Illusionist"" is a narrative portrait--a genre at which Millhauser excels--of a master magician from the late 19th century who ends his career with a dramatic trick suggesting that he himself was a mere illusion. Like the museum in the title, Millhauser ""elude[s] the mundane"" in order ""to achieve the beauty and exaltation"" of his most ""daring displays""--fictions that inspire awe.

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