The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland

The Palace of Curiosities is Rosie Garland’s debut novel. Set in Victorian London, it follows the fortunes of Eve, the Lion Faced Girl, and Abel, The Flayed Man. Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She is on the edge of her seat as she watches the heart-stopping main attraction, a lion, which is billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun. The story goes that when, nine months later, Eve is born she doesn’t cry, she meows and licks her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames the mudlarks, searching his pockets for treasure, are sure he is dead. Suddenly his eyes open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how did he survive a week in that thick stew of human waste? Outcasts from Victorian society, Eve and Abel become the Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, the star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. There begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

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