Book Review (#4) - The Palace Of Curiosities by Rosie Garland

Title: The Palace of Curiosities
Author: Rosie Garland
Published: March 28th 2013 by Harper Collins
316 pages
Goodreads  blurb:
A luminous and bewitching debut novel that is perfect for fans of Angela Carter. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the Flayed Man. A magical realism delight. Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps…and when Eve is born, the story goes, she didn’t cry – she meowed and licked her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste? Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They will become The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

This novel was extremely slow paced for me. At times I just felt that nothing was even happening at all. A lot of parts were quite boring and pointless. In my opinion the story line was well put together but it dragged out way too much. And then at the end it felt like everything was being crammed in.
I have never read anything like this before. I picked this book up thinking it was about a circus, but it is not. So please don’t make the same assumption that I did. Although my mind was set on a circus, I was still pleased with the palace of curiosities. I thought it was a neat idea.

The author did a really good job creating the setting and atmosphere of the book. Her style was really well done for the era the book was set in. I also really liked that the chapters are alternating points of view. I tend to get annoyed with characters easily so I like switching back and forth and being able to get into multiple characters heads. One downfall about the writing was that it was extremely repetitive. Abel has short term memory loss so every chapter with him we are told the same things over and over and over. That was extremely annoying.

The characters were all a little dull to me. I didn’t really end up loving any of them. The two main characters did have a bit of development throughout the book which is always a positive thing. In all honesty, I didn’t connect with any of the characters, I got bored with them, and I really didn’t end up caring what happened to them.

If you are looking for a fast paced page turner, this is not the book you want. If you want something to just relax with and take slowly, maybe you should pick this one up.

I gave this a 3/5 stars on goodreads.

Have you read this ? Were your thoughts similar or do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comments.