The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant

I finished reading The Last Days of Dogtown last week sometime but was having trouble thinking about what I wanted to say about it. I was that impressed.

I might have liked it a little better if it hadn't seemed like a bunch of short stories strung together and passed off as a novel. In fact, if it was presented that way in the first place, I probably would have skipped it. I'm not a fan of short stories.

It was about ... um ... okay, it was about the death of a town. It used to be a nice place to live and then nearly everyone left. I found the back jacket description to be very appealing: "Set on the high ground at the heart of Cape Ann, the village of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and 'witches'". It takes place after the War of 1812 and spans, I don't know, twenty years.

The stories were sort of related but not enough to make me happy. Some of them were set years apart. It just didn't have a smooth transitional feel -- not for me, anyway.

Ruth Diamant wrote The Red Tent which I know many people loved. If I'd liked this one more, I would have gone on to read that one but I think I'll pass.

The Last Days of Dogtown is in these challenges:

The Circus Fire by Stewart O'Nan

Some time ago (I can't remember which year) I read a book by an author TB and I met, Don Massey. The book was called A Matter Of Degree and it was about the Ringley Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus fire in Hartford, CT in July 1944. The book focused on investigator Rick Davey's research into the cause and his drive to identify a child who died in the fire, identified only as Little Miss 1565. One thing that surprised me was that there was so little information about such a devastating event. My curiosity was stirred and I found another book about it, bought it and didn't get around to it until recently.

What a compelling book! The Circus Fire by Stewart O'Nan is a recounting of the fire, the aftermath, the investigation and about what happened to the people involved. Sometimes I cringed at the details of the victims' injuries. I was very moved by the stories. Some had happier endings, many did not.

Little Miss 1565 was eventually claimed and identified as Eleanor Cook but there's a lot of controversy about that. Some of the evidence contradicts the details about the little girl. It was a fascinating, absorbing read.

The Circus Fire falls into these book challenges: