How did you feel about their deception and self-aggrandizement? Do circumstances make one worse than the other? In what ways did the culture of early-twentieth-century New York City favor the corrupt and those who bent the rules?ġ1.
Professor Sardie and Abraham Hochman both present themselves as things they are not. What sort of atmosphere does Alice Hoffman create by using dreams as a recurring motif? How do Coralie’s and Eddie’s dreams expose their inner lives and connect them to the past and future?ġ0.
What did you make of the living wonders at The Museum of Extraordinary Things? How did their treatment differ at Dreamland? What enables some of the wonders, such as the Butterfly Girl, to achieve a semblance of a normal life?ĩ. Did her curiosity about her father and the outside world worsen her situation or improve it? How naïve is Coralie?Ĩ. Consider Coralie’s claim that “curiosity had always been my downfall” (253). Do you agree? Does Coralie agree? In what instances does she defy her father, and when does she acquiesce to his demands?ħ. When Coralie steps into the lion’s cage, the trainer Bonavita tells her “you have a form of bravery inside you” (196). Why does Eddie feel compelled to solve the mystery of Hannah Weiss’s disappearance? What makes him a good “finder”?Ħ. Was Eddie able to let his past go? Did you sympathize with his decision to move away from his father?ĥ. Eddie says “the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go” (139). Why does Coralie keep Maureen in the dark about her night swims and her father’s sexual exploitation? Would Maureen have been able to protect Coralie if she had known?Ĥ. How does Raymond Morris, known as the Wolfman, change Coralie’s perception of her father and their circumscribed world? What parallels does Coralie find between her own life and those of the characters in Jane Eyre?ģ.
Why do you think the author chose to structure the novel this way? What effect does each fire have on the major characters and on the people of Manhattan and Brooklyn?Ģ.
The novel is framed by two spectacular fires.
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