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A Novel in Stories
by Joyce Hinnefeld
Book Reviewed by:Hinnefeld's web of characters are bound by legacies, genes, philanthropy, and chance but gravitate largely around Charlie, a rich, white, college graduate who ends up in Venice.
He's struggling to understand how his significant privilege has destroyed a romantic relationship, but he draws unwanted interest from other quarters with his interest in the writing of Ezra Pound. His Dreamer ex-girlfriend, Min, becomes a nurse and is overwhelmed by caregiving and loss, including the untimely death of a Vietnam veteran who works as a gardener for Charlie's mother.
In this novel that spans generations, though, it is Charlie's great-great grandmother, who cherished a forbidden love for a Vaudevillian male impersonator, that defines his life. She is the source of his wealth but also mother to his lonely great-aunt, who in the end controls how he's raised.
Hinnefeld writes about harsh realities, the importance of connection, and tender hearts in a fragile world. Yet she also writes of the hope and healing found in planting gardens, in poetry and art, and in families forged from abiding love and respect rather than bound only by blood.
The Dime Museum
Chicago, 1965
Tom, Maude's make-believe grandson, has called to tell her he's enlisted. (Something she already knows.) He'll join the Army before they can draft him, he says. See a bit of the world, maybe come out with more on the other side. If he comes out the other side. And both of them laugh. Maude says she wouldn't know which would be better— his coming out the other side or his not coming out the other side. She's thinking, though, why not the shortest run you could make of it? Or why not a straight path up through Michigan, across the border to the other side? That's what she would have expected of poor, bedeviled young Tom, their little Tommy, nineteen years old and living God knows where, maybe on the streets, and smoking so much he coughs like a man three times his age.
He wants to come see her, he says, to hear some of the old stories. I want you to tell me more, Non, he's said to her. Non short for Nonny, what he called her from the time he could talk. ...
The book spotlights those ostracized by society, the latter-day "freaks": the queer, poor, or addicted; the immigrants and non-citizens. Mostly set in Philadelphia from 2019 to 2021, but also featuring some European and historical settings, these linked stories contrast privilege and exclusion and draw attention to societal inequalities during the return of fascism...continued
Full Review
(610 words)
(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
Joan Silber
How beautifully knit The Dime Museum is — as soon as I finished it, I went right back to the beginning, to see the full span of it and to put together the wonderful complications of the characters. A vibrant, terrific novel.
Joyce Hinnefeld's The Dime Museum makes many references to the poet Ezra Pound. Pound was born in Idaho in 1885, grew up near Philadelphia, and spent much of his adult life in Europe. He died in Italy, his adopted country, in 1972. As a poet, he was best known for his epic The Cantos, published in segments from 1925 onward. Taking inspiration from Homer and Dante, the work had themes ranging from early U.S. government to Chinese history. The Poetry Foundation calls Pound "one of the most influential and most difficult poets of the 20th century." His oeuvre was a watershed of the Modernism movement, and he supported the early careers of writers such as H.D., Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Marianne Moore, and W.B. Yeats. He also edited T....
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