Everyone knows what it’s like to be the “odd man out”—the despair of being shunned or isolated or ridiculed by the “crowd.” For some, it can last their whole life. I’ve always been curious as to why this occurs, both from the side of those “pointing” and from that of the recipient. Strangeness attracts us by its very uniqueness, and to me, that’s something to be celebrated and marveled over. To some, it is also feared.
There’s a reason this book is a classic. I read it a number of years ago and reread it last year—it holds up exceedingly well.
The author’s depiction of the parents who take drugs with the intention of having malformed children they can showcase is a great setup, but it’s the character of Arturo the Aquaboy, in all his grandiosity, power, and neediness, that is compelling and resonates so today.
A National Book Award Finalist: This 'wonderfully descriptive' novel from an author with a 'tremendous imagination' tells the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias have bred their own exhibit of human oddities. (The New York Times Book Review)
The Binewskis arex a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan, Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins, albino hunchback Oly, and…
There’s something about the grittiness of turn-of-the-century New York that seems especially well-suited to the different and strange, including the depictions in this novel of the Coney Island seashore, the tenements of the Lower East Side, and a brutal asylum.
The characters include a “night-soiler” cleaning out tenement privies, an undertaker’s wife, and estranged twin sisters, and the way their stories weave together is a Dickens-esque plot full of intrigue, deception, heroism, and forgiveness. Over it all is a sense of magic and possibility, including people who aren’t who or what they claim to be.
'A SKILLFUL TRIUMPH' Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist - 'IRRESISTIBLE' Emma Donoghue, author of Room
New York, 1895. It's late on a warm city night when Sylvan Threadgill, a young night soiler who cleans out the privies behind the tenement houses, pulls a terrible secret out from the filthy hollows: an abandoned newborn baby. An orphan himself, Sylvan was raised by a kindly Italian family and can't bring himself to leave the baby in the slop. He tucks her into his chest, resolving to find out where she belongs.
Odile Church is the girl-on-the-wheel, a second-fiddle act in a…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Part and parcel of being different and strange is perhaps being otherworldly. Emma Donaghue’s book, like her other books I’ve read, is a propulsive page-turner that also makes you think.
Is eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell, who is said to have eaten nothing for months but appears to be thriving miraculously, a fraud? The question probes deep into our view of the miraculous, including religious conundrums that have always intrigued me: would there be Christ without miracles? Do we treasure and fear what we simply don’t understand?
Set in the author’s homeland of Ireland, this is a tale of two strangers who transform each other’s lives in a setting defined by a people intimate with hunger.
Now a Netflix film starring Florence Pugh: In this “old-school page turner” (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review) by the bestselling author of Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle—a girl said to have survived without food for months—and soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.
Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired…
This book strikes that perfect tone that hits oddness and singularity on the head, with a bit of spirituality thrown in. When a genderless, racially ambiguous person is found on a church pew (and thus called “Pew” by the parishioners), what is one to think?
Lacey expertly leads us through others’ reactions to the stranger: at first, confiding and confessing their fears, then becoming more menacing. It’s the perfect juxtaposition of what so many of us tend to do when experiencing someone who is different: projecting ourselves and our dreams and fears onto her or him or them.
WINNER of the 2021 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. Finalist for the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize. Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. One of Publishers Weekly's Best Fiction Books of 2020. One of Amazon's 100 Best Books of 2020.
“The people of this community are stifling, and generous, cruel, earnest, needy, overconfident, fragile and repressive, which is to say that they are brilliantly rendered by their wise maker, Catherine Lacey.” --Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
This biography is a fascinating look at the guy who kept one sideshow or another going for some fifty years, weathering every kind of catastrophe imaginable and, in the process, meeting all sorts of people others might consider odd. Working with monkey girls, half-people, sword swallowers, and fire eaters, Ward was the talker who brought the crowds in, as well as the one who made the numbers work and ran the show.
Like life itself, Ward’s shows were full of fakery, illusion, and the real thing—dwarfs, bearded ladies, and others seen as human oddities. His take on entertaining the masses, and the humanity of the “freaks” by which he did this, is an interesting view of both our attraction to and revulsion by the different and the strange.
Ward Hall ran across town and joined the circus for a part time gig in 1944 when he was a "kid" living in Colorado. A year later, as a 15 year old 10th grade dropout, he ran away for good, joining the Dailey Bros. Circus. He never looked back. By 16 he was performing in a sideshow and by age 21, he owned a sideshow! Today, 70 years later and countless circus and side show, vaudeville and burlesque house performances under his belt, Ward Hall is still in the business. Ward has worked with a monkey girl, a half-lady/half man,…
Johnny Cruel is born with strange appendages on his back, frightening his neighbors and leaving him struggling to find a home. He ends up in a “freak show” traveling the 1930s South, where he bares his back to onlookers who come to gape and fawn.
Is he a horror, a wonder, or an angel? Should he hide himself to live his life? Following Johnny’s journey through love, betrayal, heartbreak, and several murders, Boy With Wings is a story of the sacrifices and freedom inherent in making one’s own special way—and of love and the miracles that give our lives meaning.
Palmer Lind, recovering from the sudden death of her husband, embarks on a bird-watching trek to the Gulf Coast of Florida. One hot day on Leffis Key, she comes upon—not the life bird she was hoping for—but a floating corpse. The handsome beach bum who appears on the scene at…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
