Samantha Hunt - The Invention of Everything Else

Rating: 1/5

Review:
Not for me

I am a physicist by training and wanted to like this book because it is about Tesla for whom I have a huge admiration (and who is honoured in science by having the unit measuring the strength of a magnetic field named after him). Furthermore, I don't like writing critical reviews and usually only review things I've liked, but with Vine you review what you receive and the truth is that I really disliked this book.

My main objection to it is the style, because it is so mannered, so overblown and so obviously striving for STYLE that it badly interferes with the story and development of character. Really brilliant writers like Wodehouse, Runyon, or Chandler, for example, can create a style which adds to, or even becomes more important than narrative. Sadly, Samantha Hunt is nowhere near that league and her attempt at individuality and quirkiness is simply irritating and very intrusive. For example, the opening of Chapter 2 begins, for no reason whatever, not just in the middle of a sentence but in the middle of a word, and turns out after more than two rather tedious pages to be a radio play which Louisa, a hitherto unknown character, is listening to. It's a pointless, uninteresting trick and simply annoyed me.

As another example, later in the chapter Louisa, goes to work in a hotel. This is described thus: "Through the pale esophagus of service passages, past the stomach that is the laundry...Louisa finds herself in the tiny gallbladder of the lady employees' changing room." The digestive tract is a clumsy, unnecessary and inappropriate metaphor for the hotel's corridors which contributes nothing to either our picture or understanding of the situation. And `gallbladder'? For heaven's sake! All this, coupled with a confused and fragmented structure (not to mention an attempt at magical realism), was too much for me, and I found the whole thing to be an over-written mish-mash which in the end wholly failed to engage me and added up to very little other than a desperate and rather poor attempt at chic writing.

Plainly others feel differently about this book, and many have enjoyed it. Another reviewer described the writing which I can't stand as "vibrant prose." Fair enough: tastes vary and anyone reading this review should read the other reviews too because like their authors you may enjoy it. I'm afraid that I certainly didn't.