Among the Wonderful Review

This was my last full library read before my move and I read most of it by lantern-light during the blackout after the storm in DC.

I was immediately drawn to this book because it brings together my love of historical fiction, museums, and the circus. Strangely enough, now that I think about it, I haven’t actually been to a circus in years and I’m not sure that I’d really enjoy it if I went, but I love reading about them; there’s this aura of magic and whimsy that I just love…

Anyway, back to the point. Among the Wonderful by Stacy Carlson.

In the 1840s Phineas T. Barnum, starry eyed and unknown, buys a well-established natural history museum in New York City and immediately begins transforming it into a provocative new museum driven by gossip and greater than public imagining. Taxidermied exhibits are ousted in favor of an ever-growing live menagerie (somehow left to the care of the baffled resident taxidermist who views much of the change in the museum as a personal affront), while unusual people take up residence on the fifth floor and add to the live spectacle as representatives of the wonderful.

That is as far as I dare delve into this book without 1) having it in front of me and 2) horribly ruining it for any potential reader. Not ruining in the sense of “ruining the ending,” but just in my foisting my observations and opinions on you, which is what I normally do, but everyone needs a change of pace now and then. Anyway, it’s my blog, so my prerogative.