Church of Marvels - Softcover

Parry, Leslie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062367560 ISBN 13: 9780062367563

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2016

Synopsis

A ravishing first novel, set in vibrant, tumultuous turn-of-the-century New York City, where the lives of four outsiders become entwined, bringing irrevocable change to them all.

New York, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs.

Odile Church and her beautiful sister, Belle, were raised amid the applause and magical pageantry of The Church of Marvels, their mother's spectacular Coney Island sideshow. But the Church has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in its ashes. Now Belle, the family's star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her.

A young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped across the river in Blackwell's Lunatic Asylum--sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband's vile, overbearing mother. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak, a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both.

As these strangers' lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York--a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger. In magnetic, luminous prose, Leslie Parry offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past in a narrative of astonishing beauty, full of wondrous enchantments, a marvelous debut that will leave readers breathless.

About this title

Review:

This quite literally marvelous novel takes you on a hallucinatory ride through old New York, until the four threads of its protagonists lives tangle and tighten like a noose. Irresistible. --Emma Donoghue, author of ROOM"

[A] beautifully written tale I loved the circus-seaside atmosphere mingled with the grit of turn of the century New York, the cast of characters possessed with such spirit to survive in terrible circumstances, and the bittersweet finale. A skillful triumph, undertaken with masterful scope. --Jessie Burton, author of "The Miniaturist""

Read this book for its gorgeous writing, for its Gilded Age, a marvel of richly-imagined ?blouissance and finely-grained squalor. But most of all, read it for the moment when everything you thought you knew about one of its heroines turns upside down, leaving you breathless, astonished, and blessed. --Ellis Avery, author of "The Last Nude""

Rarely have I read any novel that gripped me so viscerally from the first page, and continued to stoke my burning interest to the last its plot is wound like a Swiss watch and its characters devastatingly real. This book is important for more reasons than I can list. --Lyndsay Faye, author of "Gods of Gotham""

[U]tterly captivating In her first novel, Parry has proven herself more than capable of sustaining suspense, with a succession of cliffhangers compelling us to turn the page this book demands a second read. --Kansas City Star"

This is not your everyday New York City novel. Set in 1895 in Coney Island and the Lower East Side, the novel follows separate lives and sets each on a weird and magical journey and has them all intertwining in a delicate dance as the novel progresses. --Refinery29, 21 New Authors You Need To Know"

Parry vividly brings her characters to life and captures the underbelly of 1895 New York Her novel satisfies as a complex historical fiction, a compelling mystery, and an insightful exploration of such themes as otherness and outsider identity. --Publishers Weekly"

Parry s writing is smooth and descriptive, and she imbues these misfit characters and shabby, sometimes horrifying settings with energy and depth. Beautifully written, Parry s imaginative novel is most successful when exploring the limitations and complexities of gender and sexuality during its historical period. --Kirkus Reviews"

Parry renders her band of misfit protagonists in mesmerizing, living color[, ] handles the plot s juggling act with admirable poise, and both the adventure and the heartbreak that results will give you thrills and chills. --Bustle, 18 Best Books To Either Read By Yourself Or Share With Your Mom This Month"

A thoughtful and satisfying modern work.... At times it reads like a Sarah Waters novel Utterly electrifying, this is the kind of novel readers will race through, only to turn the final page feeling ever so slightly heartbroken that the story has reached its end. --BookPage.com"

Book Description:

'OFTEN EXQUISITE... PARRY'S IMAGERY IS BREATHTAKING' Emily St. John Mandel, bestselling author of Station Eleven writing in the New York Times Sunday Book Review
A ravishing first novel set in the vibrant, tumultuous underworld of late-19th-century New York, about four young outsiders whose lives become entwined over the course of one fateful night.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062367560
• ISBN 13: 9780062367563
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320