the museum of extraordinary things by alice hoffman

The Professor tells her she will be the “Human Mermaid” for her swimming abilities and the webbed skin between her fingers. When Coralie turns 10, the truth is revealed: she is to see the inside of the museum, and it will be as one of the performers. He says he is afraid his specimens and performers will be too frightening for her. Coralie is kept innocent from her father’s sideshow exhibits when she is young he forbids her to enter the museum next to their home until she is 10 years old. She is raised both by her father and Maureen, their disfigured housekeeper. In the winter, he has her take ice baths. He insists that during the summer, she swim in the sea every night. Her father, known as the Professor, has strange ideas about how to raise a child. Coralie Sardie is a young girl raised by her father, the owner and proprietor of the Museum of Extraordinary Things, a sideshow on Coney Island. The novel opens in New York in the early 20th century. Her body of work is known for its strong feminist themes and aspects of magical realism. Hoffman is the author of more than 30 novels, including Practical Magic and The Dovekeepers. She becomes entangled with a young man and involved in the suspicious disappearance of another young girl. It centers on a young girl who performs as a mermaid in her huckster father’s Coney Island freak show. The Museum of Extraordinary Things is a 2014 historical fiction novel by Alice Hoffman.

The museum of extraordinary things by alice hoffman