Melanie Benjamin
3 stars
I wanted to love this book. I really did. It came highly recommended. It is about a fascinating person from American history. I thought, why not? And, after reading it, I am willing to bet that most, if not all, of you would like this book a lot if you gave it a chance.
But I found out something about myself as I read this book. Something that I am glad I learned and that forces me to give this book three stars instead of four. That something is that I don't like a fictionalized "autobiography" of a real person.
Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump Stratton Magri, aka Vinnie, was born October 31, 1841, in Middleborough, MA. Fully grown, Vinnie stood 2'8". She had what was then known as proportionate dwarfism. In other words, she looked like a perfectly formed adult female but was just extremely small. This turned out to be quite the lucky break, because proportionate dwarfs were looked upon with curiosity instead of disgust and/or revulsion. For this reason, she was able to have quite a successful life in show business, whereas those with disproportionate dwarfism were typically relegated to the side show and clown acts.
Not a whole lot is known about Vinnie's life, mainly the bare bones. She wrote a few chapters in an attempt at an autobiography, but she was not very detailed or open about her feelings and experiences. The author of this novel did do a lot of research and probably found out all she could about Vinnie, and then filled in the gaps with her own creative ideas.
What results is actually a good story. It was a good idea, and Benjamin did a good job with what she set out to do. I think she's a marvelous writer. She created a great personality for Vinnie-- it was a believable narrator throughout.
But it kind of drove me crazy, page after page, that I was reading a novel instead of a non-fiction autobiography. I just wanted to know what REALLY happened. I like learning about people and things. I love a good autobiography-- well-written and engaging. And thus I discovered that I don't like this genre.
So much of Vinnie's life is fascinating to me. Although she was sheltered in her youth, she became a school teacher at a young age. Feeling the itch to travel, she left home and worked on a showboat for about three years before going under contract with P.T. Barnum. Barnum, as you may know, was single-handedly responsible for the fame of Charles Stratton, aka General Tom Thumb, and many believe that it was Barnum who orchestrated the wedding that eventually took place between Vinnie and Charles. The Stratton wedding was the long-ago version of last year's Royal Wedding. Yes, it was that big. It took place during the Civil War and even took top billing in the newspapers for a few days.
All in all, I can't help being a bit disappointed after finishing this book, but it's not because of the book. I really wanted to love it, but I just couldn't. If you don't have this same hang-up, I highly recommend this book. You'll probably love it. If you like knowing that what you're reading about a real person is actually the truth, well, you might want to read a different book.
And now that I think about it, I think I actually would have loved this book if Benjamin had taken pieces of Vinnie's life and used them when she created a different person, some other proportionate dwarf, named something else. I've read and enjoyed novels that were "inspired by the life of" or some such. But trying to pass this off as "my best guess" of what *really* happened, and even calling it "The Autobiography..." just didn't work for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment