Book Review :: Church of Marvels, by Leslie Parry

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 show that has long since lost its magic. Odile and her sister Belle were raised in the curtained halls of their mother's spectacular Coney Island sideshow: The Church of Marvels. Belle was always the star - the sword swallower -light, nimble, a true human marvel. But now the sideshow has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in the ashes, and Belle has escaped to the city.

Alphie wakes up groggy and confused in Blackwell's Lunatic Asylum. The last thing she remembers is a dark stain on the floor, her mother-in-law screaming. She had once walked the streets as an escort and a penny-Rembrandt, cleaning up men after their drunken brawls. Now she is married; a lady in a reputable home. She is sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband's vile mother. But then a young woman is committed alongside her, and when she coughs up a pair of scissors from the depths of her agile throat, Alphie knows she harbors a dangerous secret that will alter the course of both of their lives...

On a single night, these strangers' lives will become irrevocably entwined, as secrets come to light and outsiders struggle for acceptance. From the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular sideshow to a desolate asylum, Leslie Parry makes turn-of-the-century New York feel alive, vivid, and magical in this luminous debut. In prose as magnetic and lucid as it is detailed, she offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past marked by astonishing feats of narrative that will leave you breathless.

Last updated on 6 April 2022

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What is Church of Marvels about?

As Sylvan cleans out the privies behind houses, he discovers a baby girl, left alone in the cold. He rescues her, knowing what it’s like to be an orphan, and his search begins for her mother.

“It had to be the hardest thing, even if he’d never known it himself – to accept that the ones you loved would find their own way home.”

Alphie, a young woman, finds her locked away in an insane asylum, for which she is sure her mother-in-law is responsible. One day she meets a strange speechless girl who produces hidden scissors from her throat. A move that may destroy them, or save them both.

As the lives of these four individuals begin to entwine, the connections are made and the secrets start to spill forth. Written in the third person from three of the characters’ perspectives, in alternating chapters, Church of Marvels is a wonderfully written book with fantastic language and imagery throughout. It’s a story of love and loss, of hardship and pain, of family, of loneliness, of turn-of-the-century New York.

My thoughts on Church of Marvels

This was an interesting read for me.

I found myself immediately drawn into the story, and enjoyed each introduction to the characters as the chapters went by. But somewhere in the middle I got a bit lost at times, and found that sometimes the abundance of prose and lack of dialogue for pages and pages on end was hard to read; I suspect I possibly missed a key sentence or two because of it.

“To be seen but not known was perhaps the loneliest feeling of all. He had to live for that loneliness, he decided—for the private life of his mind, for the possibility of flight.”

The story, however, was really interesting, and I did like how all the characters eventually connected. It did take a while, probably the last quarter of the book, but I did enjoy it more and got into to it a bit more when they did connect, after the slow going in the middle there. I enjoyed reading a book set in the late 1800s though, as I don’t usually read novels from that period.

If you’re after a story that is “The Night Circus meets Water for Elephants” (thanks, Goodreads), a story that is beautifully written and full of intense characters, pick up a copy of Church of Marvels. It was published in May this year, and is already receiving great reviews. Also…just look at that beautiful cover! Love it!

Have you read Church of Marvels?

You can also find this review on Blogger’s Bookshelf. I received this book for free from Hachette Publishing NZ in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.