Addie's Eyes by Tim Landry; A Historical Fantasy About Disabilities, Dreams, and Misfits
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Addie's Eyes by Tim Landry is a wholesome enchanting Historical Fantasy which combines early 20th century entertainment, including sideshow attractions and dream worlds. It's also a compelling story about two misfits who are united against a real world that doesn't understand them and a fantasy world of their own imagination. It is old fashioned in settings, theme, and style but that is what makes the book timeless the way many youthful fantasies like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of OZ are.
In 1884 Liverpool, Addie Alexander is a blind girl who works and lives at her father, Ezra’s, Ruby Palace Theater. The latest entertainer is Fedor Jeftichew, AKA Jo Jo The Dog Face Boy, a sideshow performer with hypertrichosis, an abnormal amount of hair growth on his body. Rachel, Addie's teacher, is leaving for another job, so she feels lonely. She befriends Fedor who tells the blind girl that he is just an assistant who looks after the Dog Faced Boy. The two develop a close friendship that threatens the act when her father and his manager catch them. Fedor leaves for another performance, Addie follows after him, and is knocked into a coma. While she is in her coma, she dreams of a fantasy kingdom where she can see and travel to different worlds based on hers and Fedor’s imagination.
The book has two distinct parts, the first is a more straightforward Historical Fiction. The second detailing Addie's dream is a Fantasy. These two distinct parts tell a unique story that covers both tones admirably.
The first half is genuinely touching but also has a savage bite. The bite is caused by the focus on people with disabilities and physical abnormalities, some of which are displayed for others amusement. This was an actual source of entertainment which is now seen as exploitative and dehumanizing.
I highly recommend the book, Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves, and Triumphs of Human Oddities by Frederick Drimmer for more information on sideshows and their entertainers. In fact, Fedor/JoJo is a fictionalized version of a real life performer of the same name. This amalgam of putting a real-life sideshow entertainer in this fictional setting shows the faint line between fantasy and reality that is so prevalent throughout the book.
The most heartfelt chapters focus on the relationship between Addie and Fedor. Fedor is raised to expose his differences to a thirsty, drawing, and often fickle crowd. He can’t hide who he is so he has to play a part. He is used to being stared at, so he turns it into an opportunity. He is highly intelligent, creative, and adaptable. He suggests different things to add to the act, like acrobatics or recitations to draw bigger crowds and provide more money for himself and his manager/guardian, Charlie.
Addie’s blindness also makes her an oddity as well. Unlike Fedor, she is trained to hide. She occasionally greets visitors but mostly she works behind the scenes at the theater, gathering props, moving the curtain, and running errands for her father and the performers. She usually has to stay in the theater with minimal contact except for Ezra, Rachel, and Patrick, a stagehand.
It’s no wonder that she’s so distraught when Rachel announces her impending departure. She didn’t just lose a teacher, she lost a mentor, mother figure, and one of her few contacts with the outside world. It’s also understandable why Addie bonds with Fedor. He is one of the entertainers, but he actually takes the time to talk to her and treat her like a real person and not part of the faceless help.
Like Fedor, Addie too shows an imaginative and creative spirit. In her private areas backstage, she treats the abandoned props like toys and makes up stories about them. This helps facilitate Fedor’s creativity. Fedor and Addie build a true friendship through their dual imaginations. To the rest of society they are misfits and outsiders, so their bond is that of two kindred spirits united because of a world that fears or shelters them.
Fedor weaves tales about being a prince of a land called Zymia. Addie tells her own imaginary tales. As lonely children often do, they are connected through their fantastic stories. As long as they are in their imagination, they can be brave, attractive, heroic, the people that they feel they are not. They create a world where Fedor doesn’t have to pretend to be a separate person from Jojo and Addie can go outside and see the environment that she pictures in her head. The fantasy that they create becomes real for Addie after their separation and her coma.
The fantasy aspects are similar to many of the similar stories from the 19th century. Addie comes to the world with weird characters who see her as some kind of hero and she is sent on a quest for a specific goal. In this case to find Fedor, who is their missing prince just like in his stories. It gives one the overall impression that this experience is intentionally based on those stories because they were ones that Addie told herself, that Rachel read or encouraged her to read, or that she and Fedor shared.
Many of the lands and characters that Addie sees are products of a child’s imagination and create a charming world that one would definitely want to escape into if given the chance. She befriends a terrapin (not a turtle as he reminds us), named Brother. There is also a tall lean figure made up of various blocks called Toybox. They accompany Addie on her journey. She also sees mysterious shadowy figures that could either help or harm her.
The different lands are made of themes like candy, toys, musical instruments, and others that please the senses. In a way, they are like those AI clips which show variations of the same idea like a bedroom in various weird styles decorated with wildlife, oceans, or Outer Space.
For Addie who has been living in a world of darkness and had to guess through her senses and imaginations how things looked, it is a transformative experience. That’s probably part of why this dreamscape is described so bizarre and outlandish. The Readers are visualizing it through the perspective of someone who can see for the first time and is aware how beautiful, strange, and off putting the world around her can be. Also why the thought of darkness moving across the land would be so traumatic to her. It’s a dream world that relies on the reality of the dreamer.
In fact, unlike most versions of this trope, the Reader is made aware that this is definitely a dream. While Addie is in this coma going on her imaginative journey, we are provided chapters from the points of view of Ezra and Rachel as they watch over her and Fedor as he leaves Charlie to returns to the Ruby Palace. It's an interesting and original touch to this type of story, though it somewhat drags in parts.
Sometimes, Readers like the fantasy of escapism and want to believe that at least temporarily the protagonist is there and that this is a real experience. We don’t always want to be reminded that it isn’t. We get the idea when we read about things that are actually composites of real world objects and characters. Or that a meaningless conversation in reality takes precedence in the dream. Or hey the dream provides a solution to a problem or a lesson to be learned.
Though, as with many of these stories there are a couple of later revelations that blur the dream world and the real world. That makes these real world views even more arbitrary and questionable. But that is a minor issue in a book that combines History and Fantasy to tell a story that any outsider or misfit can relate to or understand.
