The Invention of Everything Else - by Samantha Hunt (Paperback)

About the Book

Hunt's novel is a wondrous imagining of an unlikely friendship between theeccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker, where Tesla lived out his last days.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, New York City thrums with energy, wonder, and possibility in this magical novel about the life and last days of Nikola Tesla.

It is 1943, and the renowned inventor Nikola Tesla occupies a forbidden room on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, stealing electricity. Louisa, a young maid at the hotel determined to befriend him, wins his attention through a shared love of pigeons; with her, we hear his tragic and tremendous life story unfold. Meanwhile, Louisa discovers that her father--and her handsome, enigmatic love interest, Arthur Vaughan--are on an unlikely mission to travel back in time and find his beloved late wife.

A masterful hybrid of history, biography, and science fiction, with Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Mark Twain making appearances, The Invention of Everything Else is an absorbing story about love and death and a wonderfully imagined homage to one of history's most visionary scientists.

From the Back Cover

"Full of vivid imagery, sounds, memories, and dreams, this novel is a sweet story of just how normal it is to be different."
Boston Globe

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 wife. Before the week is out, Louisa must come to terms with her own understanding of love, death, and the power of invention.

"Remarkable . . . It is a rare thing for a writer to conjure belief and true understanding, but with The Invention of Everything Else, Samantha Hunt has accomplished exactly that."
Philadelphia Inquirer

"Dazzling."
Vanity Fair

"Ingenious."
Marie Claire

A Borders Original Voices Selection

A Book Sense Pick

Samantha Hunt is the author of the acclaimed first novel, The Seas, which in 2006 won a National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker and McSweeney's. She lives in New York."

Review Quotes

"An engaging portrait...and a poignant one of Tesla...There's much food for thought here and some very beautiful prose." Kirkus Reviews

"Hunt (The Seas) delivers a breathtaking novel that is both difficult to classify and impossible to ignore." Library Journal

"Oddly charming and pleasantly peculiar, Hunt's novel offers a unique perspective on hope and imagining life's possibilities." Booklist, ALA

"Inspires both awe and envy...Hunt seems to achieve this blend effortlessly...making it more remarkable still with her own offbeat sensibility." Bookpage

"A New York City chambermaid sparks a friendship with oddball inventor Nikola Tesla in Samantha Hunt's dazzling novel." Vanity Fair

"Sophisticated pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, melodrama, and historical anecdote...It all adds up to a precocious math of human marvel." Elle

"Former real-life scientist Nikola Tesla befriends a fictional hotel chambermaid in Samantha Hunt's ingenious work of historical fiction." Marie Claire

"Hunt's magical new novel is a love letter to one of the world's most remarkable inventors...For a moment...everything seems possible." The Washington Post

"[Hunt] puts her considerable talents to work...Tesla's story...is crafted with an intensity...that makes the heart beat faster." Los Angeles Times

"Full of vivid imagery, sounds, memories...this novel is a sweet story of just how normal it is to be different." Boston Globe

"Hunt's history-steeped tale...reminds us that science necessitates creativity, which also, of course, is the essence of literature." The San Francisco Chronicle

"In her vivid reimagining...Hunt pursues the links between science and creativity and storytelling and invention to their logical extreme." New York Magazine

"Glorious...pages of prose: daring and delicious, perfectly calibrated, fresh but not raw, original but neither off-putting nor disconcertingly strange." The Chicago Tribune

"[INVENTION is] a smart, colorful novel about aspiration and wish fulfillment in a world...engineers can't control." - The Believer

"Hunt's fascination with language is unmistakable, resulting in beautiful, intimate observations . . . elegant, inspired." The Village Voice

"Marvelous...one wishes these scenes would never end...[it] takes its readers back to a kindler, gentler New York." - LA Weekly

"Hunt weaves the stranger-than-fiction facts...into an engaging novel...that crackles with the possibility and promise of scientific innovation." - Seed

"An electrified, magnetized concoction that pleases, teases and dazzles...takeoff soaring with her, you will not be disappointed..." - The Oregonian

"The author is rapturous, vividly in love with her subjects and her characters." - New York Observer

"[Hunt's] novel might be 2008's 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics'...soulful and scientific at the same time." - Velocity Weekly

"Hunt weaves history and imagination to create a seductively original world..." -- Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment

"A highwire performance by a soulful and wildly intelligent writer." -- Rene Steinke, author of the NBA-nominated Holy Skirts

"You hold in your hands an important, fun, educational, magic read." -- Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng --