The Swan Gondola: A Novel

I loved this book from the moment I started reading. The characters are quirky and eccentric and one commonality is that everyone is wounded in some fashion. Inhabitants of a hard life within a harsh environment in the late 1800s would be. The story starts out with two elderly spinsters in a remote rural area whose lives are suddenly disrupted by a hot air balloon dropping onto their home and draping it with miles of yellow silk. They find the balloon pilot (a poor ventriloquist) and begin to patch him together saying, "Perhaps he'll never go and we'll have someone to keep us company when the other one dies." They do nurse him back to health and he begins to write to the woman he has fallen madly in love with at the World's Fair. The relationship between them is fraught with pitfalls, not the least of which is a wealthy widower who not just wants, but must have the ventriloquists most prized possessions and will do anything to win them. The hard lesson learned here is that nothing is permanent. Nothing is owned. Everything is temporary. Everything will be lost. But in the meantime, there are suggestions of redemption everywhere and a genuine gratification in the final chapter.

Omaha's World Fair brought people from all over the world and provided work (both legal and illegal) for the residents of Omaha. Ferret Skirrett works between the two work worlds. He falls in love at first sight with Cecily depicting Marie Antoinette as she is getting her head cut off during a horror show. Love ensues, protagonist shows up and love become complicated.Generally I avoid love stories because they can be so cliche. However this one broke that mold and kept me enraptured the entire book. The descriptions of the World Fair took me heart and soul to the fair with these people. This book explores healthy loves, unhealthy loves and realistic loves that span across the lives of Ferret Skirrett.

I thought this would be a nice love story written by a "real writer" (as opposed to lots of YA fiction that I admit to reading lots of lately). But it's just boring in my opinion. I don't see where the reviewers are getting the "mystical". Cecily seems like an airhead to me and I just feel bad for Ferret. And you kind of know what happens even without the prologue just by reading the names of the parts... Just not that interesting really.

Gorgeous writing and epic storytelling. Timothy Schaffert's powers of description are unforgettable. His historical research, incredible. I will not soon forget turn-of-the century Omaha, and The Swan Gondola's colorful cast of characters--Ferret, Cecily, August, Wakefield, and the Egan sisters (all of whom I've cast for the movie). an enchanting read that I look forward to seeing on the big screen. I loved this!Philadelphia Reader.

I suffered through this after reading a review in the paper. I was totally bored. It did pick up in towards the end. After saying this I found myself thinking about the book after I finished so something must have interested me. I understand the author did a lot of research & the history part was very accurate.

This is well-researched and pretty well-written (though wordy) but three-quarters of the way through, I just didn't really care anymore. Skimmed to the ending, which was satisfying.

Fun period mystery. Better if you read the books leading up to it.

Reminded me of Water for Elephants, because of the circus-like theme; a good story

Ideally I'd want to give this book 3 1/2 stars. Its well written (though it does take a bit to get used to the author's phrasing...there are "little trips" now and then in his structure - but still, when you're used to it, it flows nicely). The story itself is nothing spectacular, however. Its a re-write/re-vamp of the Wizard of Oz story, though the author claims it isn't. Still, I enjoyed it, and I will purchase more of his books.

What a great read! Slow to get my attention,but after the first 25 pages the story grabbed me and I couldn't put it down. Timothy Shaffert created such well rounded characters, I got so attached to them, I was sad when I finished the book.

One day, just as the Omaha World Fair of 1898 draws to a close, two elderly sisters are sitting quietly in their Nebraska farmhouse when an extraordinary event occurs – a hot-air balloon crashes onto their roof. In it is Ferret Skerritt, ventriloquist and magician. He has survived but with a badly broken leg which means that he has to stay in the farmhouse while he recovers – an intrusion the old ladies find a welcome break from their dull routine. They ask him for his story and he is at first reluctant to tell them, instead telling us, the readers. We hear about his early life as an orphan, why he became a ventriloquist, his fascination with the World Fair, his puppet Oscar. And most of all, we learn about his great love for Cecily, an actress also working in the Fair. Finally, we will learn why he was in the hot-air balloon on the day of the crash...By all rights I should have hated this one. Mostly it’s a romance, with much sighing over Cecily’s many perfections, and it has generous hints of the kind of trendy liberal political correctness that normally has me running a mile. But the writing is gorgeous and all the stuff about the World Fair is wonderful. I kept expecting to reach a point where the love aspect got too much for me, especially when in the later stages it takes on a kind of ghostly, mystical element, but it kept my attention to the end, and I was well content to gloss over the relative weakness of the plot and its too tidy resolution.As well as Cecily and Ferret, there’s a cast of characters who would be eccentric in most lifestyles but who are well and believably drawn as the street entertainers, small-time actors and grifters who haunt the periphery of the Fair. August is Ferret’s best friend – a gay half-caste Indian (using the terminology of the time) who is madly in love with Ferret but knows his love will never be returned. Billy Wakefield is a rich man with a tragic past which somehow fails to make him sympathetic – he’s by no means a stock baddie, but he’s a man who is used to getting his own way regardless of who may get hurt in the process. Cecily works in a company of actors who are performing in the House of Horrors – Cecily herself playing Marie Antoinette being beheaded many times a day for the gruesome delight of the paying customers. And the Nebraskan sisters have their own peculiarities, such as their intention to build a kind of temple on their ground with Ferret as an unlikely prophet.The characterisation is more whimsical than profound, and Cecily herself is an enigma, to me at least. I found her irritating and not a particularly loveable person, but everyone seems to love her anyway. The story, which looks as if it’s going to be a straightforward romance at first, takes off in an unexpected direction halfway through. I don’t want to include spoilers so I won’t say more on that, except that every time I thought I’d got a handle on where the story was going Schaffert would surprise me – not with shocks and twists, but with an almost fairy-tale like quality of unreality, or illusion.For me, the Fair itself was the star of the show. Schaffert shows all the surface glamour, and all the hidden tawdriness beneath: the Grand Court where the rich play, the midway for the common herd. He shows the unofficial street entertainers, the prostitutes, the drunks, the sellers of obscene photographs, the many ways to fleece the gullible. But there’s a feeling that the open grifting and true friendships on midway are somehow more honest than the insincerity among the rich, where friendships are superficial and people live for scandal and gossip. Schaffert’s plot runs the full length of the Fair, so that we see it from its dazzling opening with all the buildings white and shining in the sun, to its close, when the veneer is already peeling off, glamour gone, showing the cheap shabbiness beneath and the last fair people left stealing anything they can before they leave.I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to read this one – an odd one, but a surprise winner.