"Quite honestly, radio is a nuisance. I know. I'm its father."

books:


	• The Invention of Everything Else Samantha Hunt Houghton Mifflin, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Quite honestly, radio is a nuisance. I know. I'm its father."

This book is primarily about Nikola Tesla, the eccentric scientist and inventor from Smiljan, who invented AC electricity and wireless communication and belatedly received recognition as the inventor of radio. For the most part, it is a fictionalized account of the latter part of his life while living in New York, especially the time he spent at the New Yorker Hotel, and his interactions with his few friends and acquaintances.

It's also about a fictional chambermaid named Louisa, who is inclined towards being insatiably curious about the lives of the guests of the hotel. Louisa becomes obsessed with Tesla, his life and his inventions, and the two are drawn into a platonic friendship after discovering a mutual interest in homing pigeons. Louisa is also a part of another sub-story involving her widowed father, a family friend who claims to have invented a time machine, and a mysterious young man who may have come from the future.

Even though it's a relatively small book, it includes a detailed account of the life of Tesla, his triumphs, his failures, his phobias and inventions, and the many times he snatched defeat from the jaws of success. The writing style is largely conversational, and it doesn't get so bogged down in science that your eyes glaze over, but the overall structure of the story is sometimes hard to follow (and swallow).

The fact and the fiction don't quite fit together in this historical work, but the rich descriptions of the architecture, social structure and ambience of early twentieth century New York make for interesting reading.

Recommended for inventors, science buffs and historians

Amanda Richards, April 10, 2008

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absolutely wondrous!

What a wise, marvelous book, passing easily between past, future, the possible and the not yet realized! The writing and science are often pure poetry. The novel tells the story of the eccentric and amazingly unrecognized inventor Tesla (now in his upper eighties and living with pigeons and a room full of scientific papers and detritus in the grand old New Yorker hotel in 1943), and a young chambermaid with a longing to understand him and a hope he can restore what she has lost. This is my first introduction to this author and I can't wait to read her first book.

Stephanie Cowell, author or MARRYING MOZART and NICHOLAS COOKE

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The fine line between fact and fiction

Inventors have long had collective reputations of being brilliant and quirky and Nikola Tesla was no exception. Nicely captured in "The Invention of Everything Else", Samantha Hunt has created a story that might easily have passed as reality in Tesla's own life. That blurred line between fantasy and truth is Hunt's guiding light and she largely succeeds.

Tesla offers that inventors should not fall in love, yet his association with chambermaid Louisa, while proper, has a passionate proximity. It could be the one true love they both have found, but the author never lets the story get too close for comfort. The screwball friends and relatives they both have make Tesla and Louisa seem relatively normal by comparison.

Hunt's descriptiveness is better than her plot line. The whole idea about time travel gets confusing without a satisfactory conclusion, but her prose is colorful and never lacks definition. A tighter novel would have been better but Samantha Hunt is a promising writer and one from whom I hope we hear more.

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Dreamy historical fiction

This is a good read, but not as absorbing as I had hoped. I like the use of real historical figures like Mark Twain and John Muir. It's hard to believe Thomas Edison was quite as evil as depicted here. I love the ambience of old New York, and the dreamy quality of the writing.

I must say though, that time travel has become the genre "du jour." It's a good device and can resolve a myriad of situations, but I'm beginning to feel an over reliance on it.

I am also confused about a couple of things. Near the end of the book Tesla said he spoke to Louisa's "uncle Azor." Azor was not her uncle, but life-long friend of her father. Did I miss something? Her uncle was Dane. Also, Were Robert and Katherine people or robots? I think Hunt has been deliberately ambiguous about some parts of the plot.

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fantastic!!!!!!!!

I do not have the words to say how much i love this book...Just buy it.
Thank you Ms. hunt for the time travel back to old NY City

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

From the acclaimed author of the debut novel The Seas -- which won a National Book Award for writers under 35 -- comes this utterly transporting new novel, a wondrous imagining of an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker, where Tesla lives out his last days.

From the moment she first catches sight of Tesla on New Year's Day 1943, Louisa, obsessed with radio dramas and the secret lives of the hotel guests, is determined to befriend this strange man. Winning his attention through their shared love of pigeons, Louisa eventually uncovers the extraordinary story of Tesla's life as a Serbian immigrant and a visionary genius. Meanwhile, Louisa finds herself facing her father's increasingly imminent departure in a time machine, and swept off her feet by a mysterious mechanic (perhaps from the future) named Arthur, who has unexpectedly appeared in her life.

While luminously resurrecting one of the greatest scientists of all time, Nikola Tesla -- inventor of AC electricity and wireless communication -- The Invention of Everything Else immerses us in a magical early-twentieth-century New York City thrumming with energy, wonder, and possibility.

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