Author: Peter Carey
- Fiction
- Santillana USA Publishing Company
- ISBN: 9786071126122
- Release Date: 08-15-2013
Synopsis
From Booklist
Carey (Parrot & Olivier in America, 2010) is a bewitching storyteller preternaturally attuned to our endless struggles over love and eccentric obsessions. In this fairy tale within a fairy tale rife with historical and literary allusions, Catherine, a horologist (an expert in the science and instruments of measuring time) on the staff of a London museum, is mad with grief after the sudden death of her married lover and struggles to focus on the new restoration project her sympathetic boss hopes will comfort her. She does become enthralled by the notebooks of Henry Brandling, a wealthy nineteenth-century Englishman who went to Germany to commission an automaton for his ailing son, only to come under the spell of Sumper, a hulking, vehement inventor who may be a thief, brute, genius, or all three. As she unfolds Henry’s mysterious ordeal, Catherine meticulously reconstructs Sumper’s elaborate, mechanized wonder, work complicated by her increasing fears about her possibly deranged assistant. Set during the Gulf oil crisis and reminiscent of The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) in its linkage of a rescued automaton and loneliness, Carey’s gripping, if at times overwrought, fable raises provocative questions about life, death, and memory and our power to create and destroy. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Two-time Booker Prize winner Carey’s sterling reputation, a hefty first printing, and the novel’s echo of the book behind the Oscar-winning film Hugo make this a hot title. --Donna Seaman --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
“Dazzling . . . encompasses heartbreak, the comfort of absorbing work, the transformative power of beauty and the soul of an old machine. . . . part historical, part fanciful, and completely wonderful.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR
“Ambitious, playful and engagingly strange.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Touching and thought-provoking.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Deeply moving. . . tells the story of the essential human desire to return to the individual Edens that we inhabited. . . . beautifully told.” —Nature
“Characters that beguile and convince, prose that dances or is as careful as poetry, an inventive plot that teases and makes the heart quicken or hurt, paced with masterly precision, yet with a space for the ideas to breathe and expand in dialogue with the reader, unusual settings of place and time: this tender tour de force of the imagination succeeds on all fronts.” —The Independent (London)
La deslumbrante nueva novela de Peter Carey, dos veces ganador del Premio Booker
Catherine Gehrig, conservadora del Museo Swinburne de Londres, ve cómo su vida se derrumba tras la muerte de su compañero de trabajo y amante de los últimos trece años. Su último correo «Besos en los dedos de los pies», llega a su buzón cuando él ya ha muerto, y Catherine se derrumba por la carga añadida de tener que esconder sus sentimientos. Pero su jefe, quien conoce el secreto, le encarga un proyecto que la mantendrá alejada del escrutinio de los demás: debe volver a poner en funcionamiento un autómata celosamente guardado en el museo.
En sus esfuerzos casi detectivescos, Catherine descubre también una serie de cuadernos pertenecientes a Henry Brandling, quien, dos siglos atrás emprendió la ardua búsqueda, a través de artesanos y relojeros, de un pato artificial cuya similitud con un organismo vivo devolviera la alegría a su hijo enfermo. Así, dos seres solitarios separados por el tiempo se unen en torno al misterio de la creación y la poderosa química del cuerpo.
