The Invention of Everything Else

Hunt's novel tests the skills of a narrator with two characters, polar opposites, whose life experience ranges from naòvetÄ and innocent wonder to erudition and rueful wisdom. At first, it may seem that Marguerite Gavin lacks the gravitas to hit all the right notes, but gradually skepticism gives way to the realization that she is totally in Hunt's element. The whimsical novel, which offers surprising depth, revolves around the relationship between Louisa, a young, open-hearted New York City chambermaid, and the aged real-life inventor Nikola Tesla, who ruminates over missed opportunities--in science and in love. Hunt jumps from one to the other, as wide a gap as a narrator might have to leap. Gavin delivers both characters with seamless transitions, not to mention charm. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

January 7, 2008
In Hunt’s (The Seas
) overstuffed and uneven novel set in New York, circa 1943, an aging Nikola Tesla lives at the Hotel New Yorker and cares for (and chats with) pigeons while planning what could be his boldest invention yet. He forges an unlikely friendship with Louisa Dewell, a 24-year-old chambermaid at the hotel who also keeps a pigeon coop. The book alternates between Niko’s reminisces of turn-of-the century Manhattan and Louisa’s current domestic dramas; Niko revisits old grievances concerning the usurpation or dismissal of his many inventions, and Louisa gets ensnared in her zany father’s mission to travel back in time and reconnect with his dead wife via a time machine built by his lifelong friend Azor Carter. Assisting in the scheme is Louisa’s mysterious beau, Arthur Vaughn, who may or may not be from the future. Although many events are drawn from Tesla’s life, he and his peers, including Thomas Edison and John Muir, are cartoonish. Likewise, the city backdrop is drenched in rosy nostalgia (even Hell’s Kitchen is a quaint neighborhood). Each individual plot thread has potential, but the cumulative effect is dulled by an unwieldy structure.