Why a Booktrail?
1830s: Enter the world of the Victorian circus where people with deformities and who are different are paraded for the amusement of others. Enter the world of the ‘Unique and Genuine Anatomical Marvels’
The Palace of Curiosities
What you need to know before your trail
Victorian London. Not a place where girls or women have the right to do what they want and the freedom to escape their dreary futures. Certainly not Eva, a girl who is born with fur covering her body and face. Cast out from society, she is surprised when she meets a man who marries her, but he is just after the Lion faced girl as Josiah Arroner is the man who owns a freak circus.
Abel is another one destined for this Victorian attraction – mocked by society since he can cut himself, injure himself and almost die but his body heals itself within seconds. He becomes the Flayed man – beat him and strike him, he’ll never die.
Roll up for the show of a lifetime – but the real story is the human one going on behind the scenes when Eve and Abel meet….
Travel Guide
Victorian London
Magical realism awaits in this tale of the Victorian Freak show that looks beyond the outward appearance of those in it and into their soul.
Eve – who attends her first circus when still insides her mother’s womb – is born with lion features. Her isolation and fear in a society that rejects anything that is different – unless it is mocking it – is palpable.
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is where it is and this is the area of London whose history lends itself well to strange occurrences – Ripley’s Believe It or Not is there today for example and The Egyptain Hall (where the Starbucks now is) was commissioned by William Bullock as a museum to house his collection of curiosities brought back from Captain cook. It was later said to house very strange things indeed.
Palace of Curiosities
It is the Palace of Curiosities that provides the most flamboyant setting – sad scenes of mockery and embarrassment. It is visceral, gory, sweaty and gruesome. Talking of Eve:
Is she animal or human? Her visage cries out animal! But her manners are those of the most tenderly raised female. Which gives great satisfaction to all who venture to see her. It is an abusive and disturbing evocation of a world we would certainly not like to have witnessed ourselves but a fascinating one all the same. Don’t eat just before or during this read mind. (you won’t be able to for a while after)
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