The Electric Michelangelo - Softcover

Sarah Hall

3.62

2,538 ratings by Goodreads

9780571219308: The Electric Michelangelo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571219306 ISBN 13: 9780571219308

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2005

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Shortlisted for the booker prize, the electric michelangelo is a hugely atmospheric transatlantic love story from the most uniquely talented novelist of her generation on the windswept front of morecambe bay, cy parks spends his childhood years first in a guest house for consumptives run by his mother and then as apprentice to alcoholic tattoo-artist eliot riley thirsty for new experiences, he departs for america and finds himself in 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, cy becomes enamoured with grace, a mysterious immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her entire body in tattooed eyes

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About the Author:

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the prize-winning author of five novels - Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army, How to Paint a Dead Man and The Wolf Border - as well as The Beautiful Indifference, a collection of short stories. The first story in the collection, 'Butchers Perfume', was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, a prize she won in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox'.

From Publishers Weekly:

Hall's mellifluous coming-of-age story about an apprentice tattoo artist from the north coast of England who reinvents himself in Coney Island, N.Y., is picaresque in its sweep and lovely in its lush description. This 2004 Booker Prize finalist, Hall's second novel (after Haweswater) but first U.S. release, follows Cyril Parks from his youth in the 1910s, as he grows up the only son of the widowed proprietor of the Bayview Hotel in Morecambe, through his hard-won apprenticeship to the seedy rogue Eliot Riley, under whose exacting tutelage he becomes a skilled tattoo artist. From his benevolent mother, Reeda Parks, who puts up consumptives at her hotel, he learns not to be disgusted by the spectacle of human misery. (Reeda also performs secret abortions and campaigns for women's suffrage.) Upon Reeda and Riley's deaths, Cy takes off for America and plies his trade among the vibrant array of freak shows at Coney Island. By 1940, he meets a local Russian chess champion, Grace, and during the course of their love affair he inscribes 109 eye tattoos all over her body. Hall's writing is pure joy, especially when describing the childhood seaside shenanigans of Cy and his boy pals.
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