I don’t
know what it is. Amusement parks seem to provide a backdrop for a
fair amount of drama and crime stories. Is it the anti-quotidian?
Is it the closeness of fun thrills to horrific thrills? Or is it
just the clowns, and all the fun and terror they bring to the table?
Elizabeth Hand, in her 2019 Curious
Toys, might argue it’s the
bearded lady.
Curious
Toys is the story of Pin, a
carnie living and working at the Riverside amusement park in Chicago
in 1915. A lover of pulp magazines and their flair for adventure and
drama, when a real life murder happens on one of the park’s rides
Pin becomes a little curious and a small-time detective herself.
When it happens again, she starts to worry for her life…
Hand
keeping the detective aspect of the book as realistic as possible, at
no time does Pin become Nancy Drew or Angela Lansbury chasing down
clues in this week’s episode of a show. Period Chicago evoked as
needed, and multiple point-of-view characters filling out the
storyline, her quest to get to the bottom of the murders feels more
organic than contrived, something Hand achieves through the realistic
(vs. larger than life) aspects of the people in the story.
From the
outset, Hand provides the reader a viewpoint into the life of the
murderer, though does keep their identity hidden. Actually a serial
killer, the person has a fetish for young girls. After killing them,
he takes their clothes and dresses a doll he keeps in a traveling
suitcase, posing them for lewd photos in the aftermath. Creepy, yes,
but Hand likewise uses the twisted idea to highlight certain aspects
of mental illness, and when taken in conjunction with Pin’s
questions surrounding her own sexuality, combine to offer a unique
take on gender and identity.
Thus,
despite that Curious Toys
is set in the early 20th century, Hand still consciously triggers a
couple of major points in modern culture wars. Firstly, Pin is a
young person of uncertain gender. Born a woman, she sometimes feels
more a man (but refers to herself as she), a fact she expresses by
dressing as a young man, and is believed to be a boy by her peers at
the carnival. Racial profiling another touch point, in the
investigation of the crime, one of Pin’s co-workers, a young black
man, is accused. And thirdly is the empowerment/disempowerment of
women, in general. A lot having happened in the arena of gender
equality since 1915, Hand highlights a couple of the major points
that, in some fashion, remain today.
Hand does
not beat the reader over the head with these themes. All white males
are not portrayed as serial killing, child rapists. Non-binary
people are not portrayed as victims of an oppressive, nationalistic
society bent on eliminating them. And women are not portrayed as
perpetual victims to social norms. The aspects of gender and race,
while pointed out, are not commented upon indirectly by story,
rather, Hand allows the nature of the setting and plot to unfurl as
it will, the murder mystery the guiding light.
In
the end, Curious Toys
is a highly enjoyable novel that must first be taken as quality
detective fiction, and secondly as representation of, not commentary
on, critique of, or suggestions about social issues such as feminism,
gender identity, and racism. Read too much into race, gender, etc.,
and the reader threatens to fail to appreciate the good job Hand has
done interweaving a handful of well-drawn characters over a nicely
depicted turn-of-the-century Chicago amusement park serial killer
story. The illustration of issues does not always equate to
something more. Take that as you will—a book review in 2019 that
has to remind readers to stick with the story…
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