The Impossible Girl

Ever read a book and think, "I wish I could talk to this character?". Well, that's how I felt, reading this book. The story is about Cora, a girl born with 2 hearts, the "Impossible Girl". It's set in 1830, in New York, a messy, wonderful, dangerous time.

I loved the book for it's originality and it's quirkiness. I loved the twists and turns the story took. I don't want to give any spoilers, but if you love mysteries and time period books, with just a bit of macabre thrown in, you'll love this book.

Lots of twists & turns......keeps you turning the pages!

Cora Lee is packed to the brim with dualities. Her mother was a well-to-do (“upperten”) white woman, her father a Chinese sailor, so she’s biracial. Her aunt raised her as a boy, “Jacob,” and she still plays the part of Jacob for her night job of grave robbing, but in the daytime she’s Cora, threading her way through “upperten” society in search of gossip about deaths of people with interesting medical conditions whose bodies will bring a high price when sold to medical schools or anatomical museums. Strangest of all is her own bodily duality: she was born with two hearts, an anomaly that would make her the jackpot prize in the dark world she inhabits. She never kills the possessors of the medical oddities she tracks in order to obtain their bodies, but she finds that someone else is not so squeamish—and as word of her own anatomical secret threatens to get out, she fears that she may become the murderer’s next victim.

The overall setting of this historical mystery, mid-nineteenth-century New York, is vividly rendered, as is the underworld of grave robbing and medical-anomaly (aka “freak”) collecting. Cora, with her conflicting identities and secrets as well as her unusual (and very ironic) choice of profession, is an interesting and well-developed character. The other characters are not so complex, but they certainly pack some surprises, as Cora encounters painful betrayals but also finds friends in unexpected places. The mystery is well handled. An additional treat is the appearance of Elizabeth Blackwell, America’s first woman doctor, as a minor character. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical mysteries.

I should add that most, if not all, of the medical anomalies mentioned in the book have actually existed: the author explains Cora and her two hearts in an afterword, but I have also seen pictures to people with vestigial tails in nineteenth-century anatomy books, and the tall man with the long-fingered hands probably had a rare hereditary condition called Marfan syndrome. I know of two other excellent novels dealing with collection of human bodies with anomalies: E. S. Thomson’s Surgeons’ Hall, a mystery set in London in this same period, and Jess Kidd’s Things in Jars, a fantasy, also set in 19th-century Britain. For readers who want to see the real thing, I can recommend Gretchen Worden’s Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia (Kang’s book mentions this museum, which was just getting established at the time of her novel). If you like weird stuff, it doesn’t get any weirder than this.

“The Impossible Girl” is about young Cora Lee, a girl born out of wedlock to a former socialite and a penniless immigrant. She spends her days straddling two worlds in Manhattan, 1850, one as Cora Lee and the other pretending to be her brother, Jacob Lee. As the only female resurrectionist in New York, she’s known for finding bodies afflicted with strange anomalies and maladies, while keeping the biggest anomaly from the rest of the world. Cora, when she was born, was born with two hearts, and she knows she’s the biggest score of all.
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I won this novel in a book giveaway last year and truth be told, it languished on my shelves for a few months. But when I picked it up, I moved quickly through it. I enjoyed it! I liked Cora a lot, as well as the supporting cast. The plot is well-done, filled with murder and intrigue, and keeps you on your toes throughout. The writing wasn’t overwrought and Kang did a good job of keeping an ominous, generally dark tone throughout the novel.

Cora is a child of a reckless mother and an unknown father. Her mother dies after giving birth to her and the doctor who had come to help examines the baby and notices something unusual – a second heartbeat. He calls her an impossible girl and one who probably will not live – but Cora does just that. But having such an abnormality during a time when P.T. Barnum is promoting the unusual and other “museums” are displaying the bodies of unusual bodily features. She finds there is a price on her….hearts.

To protect her when she was young Cora’s guardians dressed her and told everyone she was a boy. She has kept the persona of Jacob to help with her business of grave robbing or as it is known – being a resurrectionist. She has a crew and they are one of the best out there are finding the unusual bodies for the medical school. Then one night a stranger muscles his way into the gang. No one really trusts him at first but he is offering more money so….

But things soon start taking a dangerous turn as people start dying – unnaturally. These are people that Cora had been watching for their potential but none of them were unhealthy. Soon the tension ratchets up as the rumors of the girl with two hearts start to swirl and unprecedented amounts of money are offered for her body. She doesn’t know who she can trust.

Oh, this was a dark book. A touch creepy too. But oh, so good. It is loosely based in fact as graves were robbed in New York to feed the medical schools’ needs to teach the doctors. Ms. Kang really knows how to develop her world and it’s so very easy to get lost in it. This is an unsavory world for sure but you come to really care for the characters in it.

It is a book that traverses many aspects of New York from the upper class world of Cora’s mother to the seedy underbelly of the slums and whorehouses. It’s a story of the haves and have nots so it’s timely in its own way. But what it is most of all is a story of love and life, loss and betrayal and ultimately of survival. There were so many unexpected twists – I don’t often get caught like I did in this book and it was something. I didn’t want to stop reading and I didn’t want the reading to stop.

4.5

I received a free copy for my honest review

I liked this book a lot, though it was quite similar to Opium and Absinthe by the same author. I loved the first book better, but could’ve loved this one more if I read it first. I read them too close together.

Very interesting read. Odd but captivating. I recommend it.

This gothic-inspired novel was well written, absorbing, and the characters were all intriguing suspects. The mix of facts and fiction surrounding the dissection and exhibition of corpses in the era was well done, and just enough dramatization to make for a page turning story. If you enjoy murder mysteries or historical fiction, I would recommend this book!

It was entertaining, and there are a few good plot twists. I'm glad I read it.

I have just started this book, but it seems good. It is differ from other books by Ms. Kang, but
am hoping it will live up to the level of her other writing!