Harper Perennial
The Electric Michelangelo
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The Electric Michelangelo
Author(s): Sarah Hall
Review(s):
“Blindingly swell, like Stendhal describing the Battle of Waterloo, or Jack Kerouac’s description of parking cars in a crowded lot or T.E. Lawrence when he cuts loose and sends thousands of noble Arabs roaring across unknown desert sands. It’s amazing work. A terrific and original novel by a splendid new writer.”
“The best moments are like this glimpse of the aurora borealis over Morecambe Bay: ‘It was light that had neither the impatience of fire, nor the snap of electricity, nor the fluttering sway of a candle. It was light that was nature’s grace, unhurried, the slowest, sweeping effulgence.’ Like that mysterious light, Hall’s novel is to be admired for its own slow grace.”
‘Confirms her status as one of the most significant and exciting of our younger novelists ... The Electric Michelangelo is a work of unusual imaginative power and range, and it deserves a wide readership.’
“A vivid depiction of changing seaside culture on both sides of the Atlantic and a smart study of a subtle but disreputable art.”
“The torrential Lawrentian flow of her prose offers many heady pleasures.”
“Her gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative, along with the beguiling vignettes she conjures up . . . the effect is intoxicating.”
‘Sarah Hall’s second novel, is richly descriptive, an evocative exploration of misfits and exiles searching for a home.’
‘Hall is a writer to indulge, and her sensuous, poetic prose is every bit as evocative as sand poured from a pocket at the end of a holiday.’
‘Twisted and tantalising, this is beatifully written and a worthy successor.’
‘The writing is so polished that it is hard to believe the author is only 30.’
ISBN: 9780060817244
Author(s): Sarah Hall
“Wickedly imagined and richly written. . . . Prose as highly colored as Hall’s has to to be savored.”—The Independent
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Cy Parks is the Electric Michelangelo, an artist of extraordinary gifts whose medium happens to be the pliant, shifting canvas of the human body. Fleeing his mother's legacy -- a consumptives' hotel in a fading English seaside resort -- Cy reinvents himself in the incandescent honky-tonk of Coney Island in its heyday between the two world wars. Amid the carnival decadence of freak shows and roller coasters, enchanters and enigmas, scam artists and marks, Cy will find his muse: an enigmatic circus beauty who surrenders her body to his work, but whose soul tantalizingly eludes him.
Review(s):
“Blindingly swell, like Stendhal describing the Battle of Waterloo, or Jack Kerouac’s description of parking cars in a crowded lot or T.E. Lawrence when he cuts loose and sends thousands of noble Arabs roaring across unknown desert sands. It’s amazing work. A terrific and original novel by a splendid new writer.”
“The best moments are like this glimpse of the aurora borealis over Morecambe Bay: ‘It was light that had neither the impatience of fire, nor the snap of electricity, nor the fluttering sway of a candle. It was light that was nature’s grace, unhurried, the slowest, sweeping effulgence.’ Like that mysterious light, Hall’s novel is to be admired for its own slow grace.”
‘Confirms her status as one of the most significant and exciting of our younger novelists ... The Electric Michelangelo is a work of unusual imaginative power and range, and it deserves a wide readership.’
“A vivid depiction of changing seaside culture on both sides of the Atlantic and a smart study of a subtle but disreputable art.”
“The torrential Lawrentian flow of her prose offers many heady pleasures.”
“Her gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative, along with the beguiling vignettes she conjures up . . . the effect is intoxicating.”
‘Sarah Hall’s second novel, is richly descriptive, an evocative exploration of misfits and exiles searching for a home.’
‘Hall is a writer to indulge, and her sensuous, poetic prose is every bit as evocative as sand poured from a pocket at the end of a holiday.’
‘Twisted and tantalising, this is beatifully written and a worthy successor.’
‘The writing is so polished that it is hard to believe the author is only 30.’
ISBN: 9780060817244