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A novel in stories
by Joyce Hinnefeld
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 follows a Big Pharma family over the course of several generations, with an emphasis on how social repression and unchecked privilege can both thwart lives...An expert example of a complicated form that will reward even more on subsequent readings." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"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." —Joan Silber
This information about The Dime Museum was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of the short story collections Tell Me Everything (winner of the 1997 Bread Loaf Bakeless Prize in Fiction) and The Beauty of Their Youth (2020), the novels In Hovering Flight (2008) and Stranger Here Below (2010), and of other short stories and essays. She is an Emerita Professor of English at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA, and the founder and director of the Moravian Writers' Conference.
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