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Overview
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.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.Finalist for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
Synopsis
Opening on the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, on the remote north-west coast of England, The Electric Michelangelo is a novel of love, loss and the art of tattooing.
In the uniquely sensuous and lyrical prose that has already become her trademark, Sarah Hall's remarkable new novel tells the story of Cy Parks, from his childhood years spent in a seaside guest house for consumptives with his mother, Reeda, to his apprenticeship as a tattoo-artist with Eliot Riley - a scraper with a reputation as a Bolshevik and a drinker to boot.
His skills acquired and a thirst for experience burning within him, Cy departs for America and the riotous world of the Coney Island boardwalk, where he sets up his own business as 'The Electric Michelangelo'. In this carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak-shows, while the crest of the Edwardian amusement industry wave is breaking, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious East European immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her body entirely with tattooed eyes.
Hugely atmospheric, exotic, and familiar, The Electric Michelangelo is a love story and an exquisitely rendered portrait of seaside resorts on opposite sides of the Atlantic by one of the most uniquely talented novelists of her generation.
The Washington Post - Carolyn See
Sarah Hall, author of The Electric Michelangelo (a Man Booker Prize finalist), steps right out on that dazzling wire. She has nothing to do with established writers of dignity and wisdom like Philip Roth or Gail Godwin, or with the all-too-predictable avant-garde. She's out to do something different, and for the first hundred pages or so it'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.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New WritersIn the 1920s, Morecambe Bay, a small English coastal town, was renowned, at least locally, for the purity and restorative powers of its air, taken regularly as a curative by the tourists who filled its hotels and restaurants. Young Cyril Parks resides there with his mother, a widow whose seaside resort becomes a haven for consumptives -- mostly men who've spent a lifetime in the mines and who now seek only a few moments of fresh air and relaxation.
From this landscape, The Electric Michelangelo, a finalist for the Booker Prize, tells the story of Cy, starting with his bleak childhood and his apprenticeship with a local tattoo artist whose capacity for drunken rages is matched only by his gift with the needle. Newly skilled, Cy departs for America and sets up shop on the Coney Island boardwalk, where he meets the enigmatic Grace, a circus performer who offers Cy his most bizarre commission yet. What transpires between them as Cy slowly transforms her entire body into a living work of art is a little like love, and new to a man who has always found contentment in solitude.
A magical pastiche of eccentric characters and colorful times, The Electric Michelangelo seduces with its detail and atmosphere. In her American debut, Hall has created a world as mesmerizing and it is unforgettable. (Holiday 2005 Selection)
The Independent
"A vivid depiction of changing seaside culture.... A smart study of a subtle but desreputable art."Eve
‘A dazzlingly atmospheric and imaginative read.’Financial Times
"Her gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative, along with the beguiling vignettes she conjures up . . . the effect is intoxicating."The Lady
‘Sarah Hall’s second novel, is richly descriptive, an evocative exploration of misfits and exiles searching for a home.’INK Magazine
‘Hall’s sensuous and brilliant imagery does not disappoint.’The List
‘Sarah Hall’s second book reads with all the colour, guts and flair of the 19th century tale - spinner.’Jack Magazine
‘Hall conveys an arresting, colourful and complex world.... Even the most miniscule of nuances fanatically thought through and delivered."Zembla
‘The Electric Michelangelo is a pleasure to read.’London Times
"The torrential Lawrentian flow of her prose offers many heady pleasures."The Guardian
‘The Electric Michelangelo is a work of unusual imaginative power and range.’Sunday Telegraph
‘The writing is so polished that it is hard to believe the author is only 30.’Independent
‘Wildly imagined and richly written. Prose as highly-coloured as Hall’s has to be savoured’Ham and High
‘Twisted and tantalising, this is beatifully written and a worthy successor.’Carolyn See
Sarah Hall, author of The Electric Michelangelo (a Man Booker Prize finalist), steps right out on that dazzling wire. She has nothing to do with established writers of dignity and wisdom like Philip Roth or Gail Godwin, or with the all-too-predictable avant-garde. She's out to do something different, and for the first hundred pages or so it'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.— The Washington Post
Susann Cokal
True art is mysterious because an overall effect is greater than the sum of individual elements. The way to read The Electric Michelangelo, then, is to put aside quibbles about plot and allow the language and imagery to sweep you up. 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, seeping effulgence." Like that mysterious light, Hall's novel is to be admired for its own slow grace.— The New York Times