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World Hotels - The Invention of Everything Else
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List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $16.32
Your Save: $ 7.68 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780618801121
ISBN: 061880112X
Label: Houghton Mifflin
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2008-02-07
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Studio: Houghton Mifflin
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Editorial Reviews:
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From the moment Louisa first catches sight of the strange
man who occupies a forbidden room on the thirty-third
floor, she is determined to befriend him.Unbeknownst to
Louisa, he is Nikola Tesla—inventor of AC electricity and wireless
communication—and he is living out his last days at the
Hotel New Yorker.Winning his attention through a shared love
of pigeons, she eventually uncovers the story of Tesla's life as a
Serbian immigrant and a visionary genius: as a boy he built
engines powered by June bugs, as a man he dreamed of pulling
electricity from the sky.The mystery deepens when Louisa
reunites with an enigmatic former classmate and faces the loss
of her father as he attempts to travel to the past to meet up with
his beloved late wife. Before the week is out, Louisa must come
to terms with her own understanding of love, death, and the
power of invention.
The Invention of Everything Else immerses the reader in a
magical mid-twentieth-century New York City thrumming with
energy, wonder, and possibility.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Inventive, pacy and surreal, but in many ways a frustrating read
Comment: "The Invention of Everything Else" is the second novel from award-winning author Samantha Hunt. Set primarily in New York in 1943, it follows the story of Louisa Dewell, 24 years old and a chambermaid working at the New Yorker Hotel. After she is caught snooping around the rooms of Nikola Tesla - one-time inventor and the man responsible for creating alternating current, now eighty-six years old and practically penniless - a bond develops between the two. As Louisa begins to discover, his public image as the eccentric scientist belies a man torn apart inside, searching for redemption near the end of his life.
The idea of alternating currents forms a prominent theme in this book, and is reflected in the structure of the novel, comprising as it does several interlinking narrative threads. The first of these, in 1943, concerns the development of friendship between Louisa and Tesla; another explores Tesla's career as he relates it to his friend 'Sam'; another follows Louisa's father, Walter, and his own history. Such an interlacing of past and present is a deliberate ploy, throwing the reader off-balance and helping to build the surreal atmosphere that pervades the writing, in which questions over the relationship of fact and fiction, the existence of an afterlife, the nature of memory - and of time itself - are ever-present.
It is disappointing, then, that this surreal quality is not mirrored in the prose, which, though it has a few flashes of brilliance, remains on the whole rather flat and unexpressive. Too concerned with pushing the plot forward, the narrative rarely dwells for long in any given scene, at the expense, unfortunately, of the kind of descriptive detail which would really bring the settings to life and allow the reader to experience the true vibrancy of New York in the 1940s.
Also lacking is the emotional depth which could allow the reader to identify closely with the characters, and in particular the main protagonist, Louisa. This is a shame, as the book is filled with a number of interesting figures - for example, the enigmatic and handsome Arthur Vaughn, who may or may not be from the future; and the charismatic inventor Azor, who claims to have built a time machine - who sadly we see too little of. Indeed, of all the characters only the central player - Tesla himself - is rendered in full detail. Unloved except for by his pigeons, still full of ideas but unable to realise them, he is by 1943 a man defeated. But as Hunt's brilliant and sympathetic portrayal demonstrates, despite his manifold quirks and faults, he was a man driven above all by the desire to make the world a better place.
A curious blend of historical and science fiction, "The Invention of Everything Else" is a novel full of ideas and imagination, and rich with characters and settings. Somehow, however, these ingredients never gel completely together, and thus while it remains an enjoyable read, in the long term it tends to frustrate rather than engage the reader.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dreamy historical fiction
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: fantastic!!!!!!!!
Comment: 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
Customer Rating:
Summary: The fine line between fact and fiction
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: absolutely wondrous!
Comment: 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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