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Title details for The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt - Available

The Invention of Everything Else

by Samantha Hunt
Marguerite Gavin
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

The Invention of Everything Else is a luminous imagining of an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young hotel chambermaid. Louisa, obsessed with radio dramas and the secret lives of the hotel guests, first catches sight of the hotel’s most famous resident on New Year’s Day, 1943, and is determined to befriend the strange man. As they share their mutual affinity for pigeons, Louisa begins to piece together the story of Tesla’s extraordinary life as an immigrant and visionary genius. Meanwhile, faced with her father’s imminent departure in a time machine, as well as the unsettling arrival of a mysterious mechanic (perhaps from the future) named Arthur, Louisa begins to suspect that she has understood something about the relationship between love and invention that Tesla, for all his brilliance, never did.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 7, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481582759
      • File size: 289414 KB
      • Duration: 10:02:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 8-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Hunt's novel tests the skills of a narrator with two characters, polar opposites, whose life experience ranges from naòvetÄ and innocent wonder to erudition and rueful wisdom. At first, it may seem that Marguerite Gavin lacks the gravitas to hit all the right notes, but gradually skepticism gives way to the realization that she is totally in Hunt's element. The whimsical novel, which offers surprising depth, revolves around the relationship between Louisa, a young, open-hearted New York City chambermaid, and the aged real-life inventor Nikola Tesla, who ruminates over missed opportunities--in science and in love. Hunt jumps from one to the other, as wide a gap as a narrator might have to leap. Gavin delivers both characters with seamless transitions, not to mention charm. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 7, 2008
      In Hunt’s (The Seas
      ) overstuffed and uneven novel set in New York, circa 1943, an aging Nikola Tesla lives at the Hotel New Yorker and cares for (and chats with) pigeons while planning what could be his boldest invention yet. He forges an unlikely friendship with Louisa Dewell, a 24-year-old chambermaid at the hotel who also keeps a pigeon coop. The book alternates between Niko’s reminisces of turn-of-the century Manhattan and Louisa’s current domestic dramas; Niko revisits old grievances concerning the usurpation or dismissal of his many inventions, and Louisa gets ensnared in her zany father’s mission to travel back in time and reconnect with his dead wife via a time machine built by his lifelong friend Azor Carter. Assisting in the scheme is Louisa’s mysterious beau, Arthur Vaughn, who may or may not be from the future. Although many events are drawn from Tesla’s life, he and his peers, including Thomas Edison and John Muir, are cartoonish. Likewise, the city backdrop is drenched in rosy nostalgia (even Hell’s Kitchen is a quaint neighborhood). Each individual plot thread has potential, but the cumulative effect is dulled by an unwieldy structure.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:8-12

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