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A review by alexawkelly
Quint by Dionne Irving
3.0
What an incredibly strange little book this was. I picked it up because, according to those who know best, I can never resist books about "tragic families with too many girls" (I was taking out a book about the Romanovs at the same time, so that made a lot of sense, actually.) I don't even remember how the story of the Dionne quintuplets got on my radar in the first place, as I am not Canadian (although an American coworker who was in her eighties told me she remembered having Dionne dolls as a child!), but it has deeply intrigued me since. It's interesting to me how children too young to consent to such things being exploited for fame is a tale as old as time (particularly if they're born a set of multiples—hello, entire TLC lineup).
To be clear, this is not a story about the Dionnes...and it is. The names have all been changed, and the time period shifted slightly from the 1930s to the 1940s. There's an unnamed sixth sibling (making these fictional Dionnes properly sextuplets, I guess?) who dies shortly after birth and serves as an omniscient narrator for much of the book. And yet, other things are lifted right out of history, including names of specific pieces of media (books about the quintuplets, films that the real quintuplets actually appeared in), and, most especially, the horrific exploitation and turning of children into a sideshow for personal gain. And while I really liked Irving's writing style (side note: searching this book on Goodreads, when the author's first name is identical to the real quintuplets' last name, was NOT EASY), I had a hard time parsing out how I felt about it at the end. Maybe because I've read so much about the real quintuplets, I had a hard time reconciling fact with fiction, especially because the two collided in so many unexpected ways in the novel. To be clear, however: I'm very glad that the quintuplets' story was fictionalized in this book. Another work of historical fiction on this subject, The Quintland Sisters, did not do such a service, and took historical liberties with characters that were ethically dubious, given that these were real people whose children and grandchildren are still alive today.
Somewhat minor quibble: the editing of this book was atrocious! Several very obvious punctuation mistakes, one instance of the same sentence repeated twice, and there wasn't even any spelling consistency in one of the quintuplet's names. (She was alternately "Madeline" and "Madeleine.") The only reason I bring this up is that there really truly were a lot of errors, and I was disappointed on behalf of the author, who clearly worked hard and researched a lot on this novel, and deserves better than one of my main takeaways being that the editing was bad.
To be clear, this is not a story about the Dionnes...and it is. The names have all been changed, and the time period shifted slightly from the 1930s to the 1940s. There's an unnamed sixth sibling (making these fictional Dionnes properly sextuplets, I guess?) who dies shortly after birth and serves as an omniscient narrator for much of the book. And yet, other things are lifted right out of history, including names of specific pieces of media (books about the quintuplets, films that the real quintuplets actually appeared in), and, most especially, the horrific exploitation and turning of children into a sideshow for personal gain. And while I really liked Irving's writing style (side note: searching this book on Goodreads, when the author's first name is identical to the real quintuplets' last name, was NOT EASY), I had a hard time parsing out how I felt about it at the end. Maybe because I've read so much about the real quintuplets, I had a hard time reconciling fact with fiction, especially because the two collided in so many unexpected ways in the novel. To be clear, however: I'm very glad that the quintuplets' story was fictionalized in this book. Another work of historical fiction on this subject, The Quintland Sisters, did not do such a service, and took historical liberties with characters that were ethically dubious, given that these were real people whose children and grandchildren are still alive today.
Somewhat minor quibble: the editing of this book was atrocious! Several very obvious punctuation mistakes, one instance of the same sentence repeated twice, and there wasn't even any spelling consistency in one of the quintuplet's names. (She was alternately "Madeline" and "Madeleine.") The only reason I bring this up is that there really truly were a lot of errors, and I was disappointed on behalf of the author, who clearly worked hard and researched a lot on this novel, and deserves better than one of my main takeaways being that the editing was bad.