Publisher/Year: Faber and Faber, 2004
Synopsis: 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.
What Others Have To Say:
The Guardian
"...a work of unusual imaginative power and range."
The New York Times
"The way to read [it] then, is to put aside quibbles about plot and allow the language and imagery to sweep you up."
BBC News
"This is an exhaustingly energetic book filled with emotion, historic trivia and sometimes sordid detail, all tied up into a very unusual plot."
Extras:
Reading Guide
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