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A Novel
by Dan Chaon
Book Reviewed by:A playfully macabre and utterly thrilling tale about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a bizarre traveling carnival, from a master of literary horror.
It's 1915 and the world is transforming, but for thirteen-year-old Bolt and Eleanor―twins so close they can literally read each other's minds―life is falling apart. When their mother dies, they are forced to leave home under the care of a vicious con man who claims to be their long-lost uncle Charlie, the only kin they have left. During a late-night poker game, when one of his rages ends in murder, they decide to flee.
Salvation arrives in the form of Mr. Jengling, founder of the Emporium of Wonders and father to its many members. He adopts Bolt and Eleanor, who travel by train across the vast, sometimes brutal American frontier with their new family, watching as the exhibitions spark amazement wherever they go. There's Minnie, the three-legged lady, and Dr. Chui, who stands over seven feet tall; Thistle Britches, the clown with no nose, and Rosalie, who can foretell the death of anyone she meets.
After a lifetime of having only each other, Eleanor and Bolt are finally part of something bigger. But as Bolt falls in deeper with their new clan, he finds Eleanor pulling further away from him. And when Uncle Charlie picks up their trail, the twins find themselves facing a peril as strange as it is terrifying, one which will forever alter the trajectory of their lives. An ode to the misfits and the marginalized, One of Us is a riotous and singularly creepy celebration of the strange and the spectacular and of family in its many forms.
EXORDIUM
They was born out the same womb, two minutes apart, Rosalie says, and her head lolls back. Her eyes stare at the ceiling.
They was born 1901, November of the eighth. A girl came forth and—
Pullt out her brother with the cord wrapped round his foot—
Drug him into the daylight—
* * *
Rosalie seems to smile sleepily, not blinking even as a mosquito alights on the glossy surface of her cornea.
Murderers, she says.
Rosalie twitches, her hands gnarling against her chest. A spasm runs across her face as a cool damp cloth is pressed to her forehead. A viscid breath rattles in her throat.
Eleanor is the girl's name, she whispers. The boy's name is Bolt.
* * *
There is a growth at the back of Rosalie's skull about the size of a gourd, and it seems to have a face, though of course many things resemble faces when they are not. Two soft bulges on the deformity are damp and shiny as peeled hard-boiled eggs, and could be said to look like eyes; an indentation in the center appears to...
The protagonists are twins Bolt and Eleanor, both raised in a Spiritualist church. After their parents die, their sadistic "Uncle" Charlie becomes their guardian. The twins manage to flee and find work with Mr. Jengleng, a kinder version of P.T. Barnum. Meanwhile, Uncle Charlie is desperate to reclaim the twins and sets out to find them. I loved the world of carnival life the author builds. He includes the everyday work alongside the more alluring freak show depictions. The ethics and ableism of freak shows have been discussed often, as they should be. For the sake of enjoying the book, I suspended the impulse to ask those questions. It was especially easy because Chaon has the perfect touch, ensuring the sideshow performers are fully developed characters. I cared about them from the start...continued
Full Review
(723 words)
(Reviewed by Erin Lyndal Martin).
Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
Only in Dan Chaon's hands does a rollicking tale of a traveling sideshow carnival, serial killer, and psychic orphaned twins become a complex, soaring elegy for an America that never was and never will be. One of Us is a brilliant novel and a beating heart in the darkness. Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
I've run off to join the circus, Ma! It's Dan Chaon's. And I don't ever want to leave.
In the early 20th century, traveling circuses were common, and so were the sideshows that often accompanied them. While no one can definitively say which was the first, we know that P.T. Barnum was an early innovator. In 1842, he opened a museum to display his collection of oddities and human attractions. After the museum burned down, Barnum took his show out on the road. It featured a lot of the performers (or "freaks") that we most associate with sideshows today. Siamese twins Cheng and Eng Bucker were on the tour, as was General Tom Thumb, who was 3'4" owing to his dwarfism. Sideshow performers often married each other, as was the case with the Alligator Boy and the Monkey Girl. I make special mention of Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged ...
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