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    The Palace of Curiosities
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    The Palace of Curiosities
    Unavailable
    The Palace of Curiosities
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Palace of Curiosities

    Written by Rosie Garland

    Narrated by Jane Copland

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    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 soar to fame as 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 28, 2013
    ISBN9780007512560
    Unavailable
    The Palace of Curiosities
    Author

    Rosie Garland

    Rosie Garland has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. She is is the author of Vixen and her debut novel, The Palace of Curiosities won Book of the Year in the Co-op Respect Awards 2013 and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her next novel is The Night Brother and will be published in 2017.

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    Reviews for The Palace of Curiosities

    3.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

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    • 3/5
      Set in Victorian England where life is cold and cruel for the poor and different, this is a story of hope and fortitude. Against all incredible odds, is the fortitude to live and love.Excellently written, Garland takes the reader to the seemly underbelly of England. Eve is born with the very unique deformity of a lion-faced girl. With paws for hands and abundant fur, she is found by Josiah Arroner. In love with the concept of love and normalcy, Eve agrees to marry him.Too late, she realizes he simply wanted to add her to his "palace of curiosities" where the gentrified and not-so refined can pay a fee to see wonders of the age. As she sits on stage, dressed in elaborate clothing, timidly waving a colorful fan, the audience gaps at her, at times making lewd remarks.Abel is a man cursed with the fact that he can never die. Living over and over again, forgetting much and longing to be free, many times he attempts to kill himself. Unsuccessful in freeing himself of the chain of perpetual life, Abel resides as a curiosity in "Professor" Josiah Arroner's house of the abnormals.Exploited by their keeper, they begin a life changing journey.Three Stars.