Pg. 99: Samantha Hunt's "The Invention of Everything Else"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wondrous imagining of an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker where Tesla lives out his last days

From the moment she first catches sight of the Hotel New Yorker’s most famous resident on New Year’s Day 1943, Louisa -- obsessed with radio dramas and the secret lives of the guests -- is determined to befriend this strange man. As Louisa discovers their shared affinity for pigeons, she also begins to piece together Tesla’s extraordinary story of life as an immigrant, a genius, and a halfhearted capitalist. Meanwhile, Louisa — faced with her father’s imminent departure in a time machine to reunite with his late wife, and pleasantly unsettled by the arrival in her life of a mysterious mechanic (perhaps from the future) named Arthur -- begins to suspect that she has understood something about the relationship of love and invention that Tesla, for all his brilliance, never did.

The Invention of Everything Else luminously resurrects one of the greatest scientists of all time, Nikola Tesla, while magically transporting us -- à la Steven Millhauser and Michael Chabon -- to an early twentieth-century New York City thrumming with energy, wonder, and possibility.

Among the wide acclaim for the novel:

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

"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

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

Read an excerpt from The Invention of Everything Else, and learn more about the book and its author at Samantha Hunt's website.

Samantha Hunt is the author of the acclaimed first novel The Seas, and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s and on This American Life.

The Page 99 Test: The Invention of Everything Else.

--Marshal Zeringue