Curious Toys and One Fabulous Boy - Elizabeth Hand's Latest Book is a Fascinating Time Capsule

Elizabeth Hand is one of those veteran authors that genre aficionados know and appreciate but who has never made it completely into the mainstream. Honestly, this is a big shame, because every single book by her is a professionally written world of its own - well crafted, well researched, always with an extra mile beyond the ordinary storyline. Her Locus and Shirley Jackson nominated latest book Curious Toys is no different; it combines elements of historical fiction, crime fiction and horror in a way that will keep you up at night turning the pages. I for my part enjoyed reading it so much that I carefully rationed the pages so that I wouldn't devour it within a couple of days in my haste and in order to prolong my enjoyment.

Truth is, this isn't only a book. This is a captivating time capsule that will carry you away to the early 20th century and that definitely lives up to its title!
It's August 1915 and the Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago features many curiosities; baby incubators as boardwalk sideshows (and it is incredible but true, look it up!), peculiar She-Man Max and Maxene, the fortune-teller Madame Zanto and dark rides like Hell Gate...
It's on one of these dark rides that Pin Maffucci witnesses something very disconcerting: an adult man and a young girl entering together and the man coming out alone. Pin is Madame Zanto's 14-year-old daughter, hanging about the Riverview Amusement Park disguised as a boy, because it's safer for her. She isn't the only one to see the disappearance of the girl, real-life character and outsider artist Henry Darger (aka. Detective Enrico Dargero) saw it too and so this odd couple begins investigating to find out what exactly happened.

Curious Toys really works on many levels and first and foremost it is an intriguing mystery. But it is so much more too. There are, for instance, Pin's insights she can gain as a girl dressed as a boy and her being in the position of making comparisons between the liberties given to each, which must have been very accurate for that time. I should add that Hand knows better than to limit her representation of gender to constructed binarisms and questions them dauntlessly. The way in which women and girls were expected to behave and to be represented in show business, namely as toys, as puppets with ringlets, lace handkerchiefs, babydoll dresses are an essential part of this world made by men for men and is at the heart of the mystery Hand confronts us with.

Another level of reading this book offers, and for me personally it was the main factor that made it tremendously enjoyable, consist in the parallels to the above mentioned real-life character Henry Darger's work. Darger had during his own lifetime a mental illness which limited his social skills enormously but he was also a brilliant artist whose artwork was only discovered after his death, in his room. For the decades he worked as a janitor in a hospital, he went into his room after his day job and tirelessly worked on his art. When he died his work encompassing ten thousands of pages of ingenious collages, drawings and writings about a children's uprising was discovered. His work can now be seen at the American Folk Art Museum in New York and for further reading I would recommend this article by Deborah Markus.

On both visual as well as thematic levels does Curious Toys establish a connection to Darger's work; not only is the hot, dusty summer of a Chicago amusement park reminiscent of the warm colors, tones of yellow and orange, with colorful children running around reminiscent of Darger. Other similarities would be children suffering, being tormented, tortured, abused, a theme Darker seems to have a fixation on, as well as sexually diverse figures, like little girls with penises, girls who are boys - which Pin is for the fictional character Darger. Must have been formidably brave and new for its time. The connections, although imaginary, are towards the end of the book very touching and give a whole different meaning to the story.

I would definitely recommend Curious Toys to everyone I know - Hand is a hell of a writer, the story offers way more than a simple mystery and is simply fantastic.