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The Electric Michelangelo
- Author: Sarah Hall
- Category: Fiction
- Publisher: Faber(UK)
- Pub date: 18 March 2004
- Length: 288 pages
About The Electric Michelangelo
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004
Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina 2004
‘Gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative, along with the beguiling vignettes [Hall] conjures up… the effect is intoxicating’
— FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Confirms [Hall’s] status as one of the most significant and exciting of our younger novelists… a work of unusual imaginative power and range’
— GUARDIAN
‘The 20th century whirls past like a carousel in this rollicking novel of fairground life, where eroticism and brutality pulse from every booth… A dazzlingly atmospheric and imaginative read’
— EVE
In the uniquely sensuous and lyrical prose that has already become her trademark, Sarah Hall’s second novel tells the story of Cy Parks, from his childhood years spent in an English seaside guesthouse 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 circus performer who commissions him to cover his body 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.
About the Author
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize.
In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC award. It was chosen as one of the Times Best 100 Books of the Decade.
Her fourth novel, How To Paint A Dead Man, was published in 2009. It was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in the same year and won the Portico Prize in 2010. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is working on a fifth novel and a collection of short stories.
Sarah Hall is an honorary fellow of Aberystwyth University, and a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2007). She was a member of Art Council England, North-West region 2008-2009. She regularly tutors for the Faber Academy, the Arvon Foundation, and has taught creative writing in a variety of establishments in the UK and abroad. She currently lives in Cumbria.