7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dreamy quality of novel also a reader's dream, December 10, 2000
I love it when I discover an author so gifted and talented that reading his or her current book makes me salivate at the thought of going back to savor previous works! Such is the case with Carrie Brown's "The Hatbox Baby" - the title of which alone was enough to intrigue me. And I must say that the book lives up to - and, indeed, beyond - its innovative title.
The novel tells the story of a baby which is brought to Dr. Leo Hoffman's premature baby exhibit at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The baby's frantic father has brought him to Dr. Hoffman - considered to be a world-renown specialist in what are today called "premies" - on the advice of the midwife who helped deliver the baby. "If anyone can help your baby, HE can," she tells the baby's father.
As the father first hunts frantically for the exhibit and then, once he's found it, loiters hesitantly outside the doctor's tent, Ms. Brown demonstrates her ability to build and maintain suspense while evoking the dream-like unreality of the fair atmosphere, with its carnival trappings, misshapen participants and crowds eager for titillation and entertainment.
Careful and thorough characterizations leave the reader with clear pictures of Dr. Hoffman, Caroline the Fan Dancer (whose risque exhibition/dance show is located next door to the baby exhibit) and St. Louis, the pseudo-dwarf who is both friend and adopted family to Caroline, among others. Ms. Brown knows how to elicit the reader's sympathy for and understanding of the people that populate this novel and this connection is established through her fine writing and ability to place the reader within the minds and worlds of her characters.
And, over all, looms the World's Fair - entertaining, nightmarish, ridiculous, pathetic, but always present and always clearly delineated. This backdrop, with its focus on the future and its marvels to come, still never manages to escape the fact that some things - both good and bad - are eternal and ageless.
Of course, there is The Hatbox Baby itself and the questions it and its fellow exhibits raise, including asking the reader to consider just what is "normal" anyway. This novel is a brilliant and unforgettable work, and I recommend having time at your disposal once you begin reading it because you will not want to put it down.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Hatbox Baby is a find!, April 22, 2001
On a sweltering summer morning in 1933, a baby is delivered in a hatbox to Infantorium at the World's Fair & a mystery of love lost & found begins among the freaks & marvels of the Century of Progress Exposition.
Somewhere in that hot midwestern city, a young woman is giving birth, with the help of a neighboring midwife, to an infant unlikely to survive. The father, in desperation snatches up the living babe & rushes off to the World's Fair because he'd read about a doctor who could save premature babies.
It is the life of this tiny baby, born too early, that brings strangers together in a bond of desperate hope, frantic escapes & heartwarming redemption in a far-away time our grandparents might remember well.
A beautifully researched & written adventure of a special time & a particularly strange place. A fascinating read!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great world to live in for a few days, August 18, 2002
This review is from: The Hatbox Baby (Mass Market Paperback)
I really fell in love with this book. It was a cross between Geek Love and The Ciderhouse Rules (two of my favorite books). It was odd and sad and beautiful at the same time. I just liked the idea of living amoung the people at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933 when things that we take for granted now were just being discovered. The author did a great job of putting you right on those streets in that era with characters you start to really to care about.
Some people complained about the ending and I can kind of see their point. There is not a lot of resolution but if you read it just to go on a trip into the strange and awesome world of carnivals and the people who inhabit them you will love the ride.
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