Curious Toys
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“This book contains a rare kind of perfection: Elizabeth Hand’s rough, observant magic draws into its circle great historical accuracy, a cross-dressing central protagonist, a wonderfully tender portrait of the great Outsider Artist Henry Darger, a vibrant thriller plot, reflections on gender and its place in civic order, a helpful Ben Hecht, and one of the greatest climactic drop-the-mic moments I’ve ever read—and does all this while patiently setting into place the warm emotional armatures that made Curious Toys so moving.”
“While the amusement park setting enables Hand to ramp up the tension with a toolbox of strange and creepy people and places to play with, she never falls prey to pointless sensationalism. This makes Pin’s story — her quest to discover the truth, not just about what happened in Hell Gate, but about who she is and how she might find a place in the world — more vivid.”
“To call the novel and its characters ‘colorful’ is a terrific understatement. A carnival setting immediately allows for a higher threshold of the bizarre, but Hand skillfully develops each character beyond mere oddity or empty sensation. Most of all, Pin is an engaging, courageous heroine, and her musings on gender identity are both poignant and relevant. Richly imaginative and psychologically complex.”
“Sinister sideshow hustlers, back alley intrigues, and brilliant outsiders: turn-of-the-century underworld Chicago comes alive in Elizabeth Hand’s rich, spooky, and atmospheric thriller that will appeal to fans of Henry Darger and Erik Larson alike. Elizabeth Hand is a national treasure.”
“Curious Toys is wonderful. I stayed up late two nights in a row with it, transported to a Chicago I never experienced firsthand — it will be catnip for readers who love Chicago, circuses, cross-dressers, and early cinema. I think it is a delightful addition to the literature of Henry Darger. I hope he might have had a companion as interesting as Pin, though somehow I doubt it, alas.”
Riverview, Chicago 1914 map
“Glittering and scruffy as its carnival setting, with the deep gravity hold of a rollercoaster.”
“I’ve long admired Elizabeth Hand for her ability to write in whatever genre pleases her, be it noir, fantasy, and science fiction. With Curious Toys she goes further, spinning a wild, expansive, and bravura tale of carnival life, dead and missing girls, identity shifts, and big dreams transformed into awful nightmares. I loved this book.”
“...while Hand paces her mystery with classic precision, the real reward of “Curious Toys” lies in its richly textured panorama of Chicago during a crucial period of change, and in its vivid characters. Riverview, of course, is legendary among older Chicagoans, and Hand presents it not as a generic carnival-murder setting, but as a kind of distorting mirror of cultural anxieties, many of which are still with us today. ”
“[Hand] crafts a gritty and winsome character whose sheer determination to catch a murderer makes this mystery novel whiz by.”
“From an author who has achieved acclaim for stories of crime, horror, and fantasy, comes a new tale of intrigue and murder that checks off many of my favorite boxes. It’s got: lady detectives, old seaside amusement parks, the Gilded Age, silent film, women who disguise as men to embed in male-only groups, women who look out for other women.”
“An immersive, inventive historical mystery, led by a distinctly modern, queer heroine. I loved this story!”
“I finished Curious Toys agog and filled with awe. The balance Elizabeth Hand strikes between history and fiction is breathtaking, every scene so memorable and etched in my mind. Here’s hoping this masterful novel gets every accolade it richly deserves.”
The Alienist meets The Devil in the White City: An intrepid young woman stalks a murderer through turn-of-the-century Chicago, in the transfixing new historical novel from Elizabeth Hand.
In the sweltering summer of 1915, Pin, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a carnival fortune-teller, disguises herself as a boy and joins a teenage gang that roams the famous Riverview amusement park, looking for trouble.
Unbeknownst to the well-heeled city-dwellers and visitors who come to enjoy the attractions, the park is also host to a ruthless killer who uses the shadows of the dark carnival attractions to conduct his crimes. When Pin sees a man enter the Hell Gate ride with a young girl, and emerge alone, she knows that something horrific has occurred.
The crime will lead her to the iconic outsider artist Henry Darger, a brilliant but seemingly mad man. Together, the two navigate the seedy underbelly of a changing city to uncover a murderer few even know to look for.
“A phantasmagoric time trip tailor-made for fans of The Devil in the White City.”
Riverview Park
“When great artists meet—in this case Henry Darger and Elizabeth Hand—extraordinary things happen. For years Elizabeth Hand has been the supreme writer’s writer, an inside secret among those in the know. With Curious Toys, Elizabeth Hand confirms her place as one of the great writers of our era. This book is exactly what you want to read—absorbing, intelligent, bold. As the author says, only a girl would be so brave.”
“Hand expertly plays the excitement of Chicago’s burgeoning entertainment industry against the killer’s unsettling obsession with dolls, twisting the story even darker by pairing Pin with Henry Darger, a freshly released psychiatric patient who claims he’s on a mission to save Chicago’s girls. A well-crafted and deliciously unsettling period thriller that will find fans among those who enjoy Caleb Carr’s mix of early modern technology and investigative action.”
“Curious Toys is an utterly compelling read with a sleuth who will win your heart. This is one mystery you won’t want to miss.”
“The historical details are fantastic, as are several cameos by real-life figures besides Darger. When readers reach the end of this thrilling adventure, they’ll see how every choice has been perfectly made. Hand is a mage of the page. The gritty mise-en-scène and realistically portrayed characters in her novel will enchant those who like tough-girl protagonists and antiheroes, as well as fans of historical crime fiction.”
“With short, breathlessly paced chapters and constantly shifting points of view, “Curious Toys” is itself like a carnival ride: alternatively dazzling and terrifying, disorienting and marvelous.”
“[Hand] has crafted Curious Toys as a tense, short-chaptered contemporary thriller, the kind where you might think “I’ll read just two more pages” and then catch yourself having gulped down twenty. Yet like Pin herself the novel is something much more complex than it at first might appear.”
“Elizabeth Hand crafts a story that is, to borrow her own phrasing late in Curious Toys, ‘gruesome but peculiar,’ a fun house mirror of a novel filled with Chicago history and detail. Dark and thrilling.”
“This atmospheric novel will transport you to a world you’ve never imagined before.”
“Deliciously creepy... Atmospheric... Hand’s gripping plot mines the era’s vagaries with aplomb.”
“Hand’s research into Chicago history is impeccable without ever seeming gratuitous, and even secondary characters such as Chaplin and Hecht emerge as fascinating and complex. But the story—which tightens its spiral as neatly as any murder mystery—finally belongs to Pin and Henry Darger, and mostly to Pin, an absolutely marvelous creation who, in the superb ending, turns out to be far more than we expected.”
“[Curious Toys] blends fact and fiction in fascinating ways. Avant-garde artist Henry Darger makes for an interesting companion to the gender-fluid lead character of this unusual serial killer novel.”