The Invention of Everything Else ~Samantha Hunt

–published 2008
–251 pages, Houghton Mifflin
–3.75/5 stars

Where does one begin to describe what results from Samantha Hunt’s sophomore novel? Though it feels like cheating I think the most efficient way to introduce you to Hunt’s creation is to show you exactly what inspired me to lay aside the books I was currently reading and begin this immediately upon arriving home with it from the bookstore:

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

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.

I must confess to not having read the aforementioned authors, Millhauser and Chabon, however I could not help but compare this book to an old favorite: Time and Again by Jack Finney. While both books have major differences both in their subject matter and in their delivery, there is a kinship of type, of genre, that these two novels share. Both books by all rights could be shelved in the science fiction section of any bookstore and be readily at home there. Both books contain the kind of science fiction underpinnings that books like The Time Traveler’s Wife share. Perhaps it is the historical aspects and romanticized early 20th century sensibilities of these two books that cause them to be classified as literature rather than science fiction. I believe that fans of either type of fiction would find something to enjoy in Hunt’s novel.

I have to admit that other than the knowledge gleaned from David Bowie’s portrayal of Nikola Telsa in the film, The Prestige, I knew little about the famous inventor going in to this story. It turns out Ms. Hunt was in the same boat. On a website interview she shares that she left a museum determined to look up an inventor whose name she had come across. She looked up the wrong inventor, Tesla, and became so intrigued by his history that it became the genesis of this novel.

It is hard to pinpoint just what Invention is all about. While the book’s synopsis gives a good overview, there is so much going on here that one could discuss. In addition to learning many interesting things about this inventor, including the fact that his ideas and patents were behind many of the inventions that are credited to other more well-known inventors (why can’t more history books read like this?), the reader is taken to a time when the world seemed more innocent; a time when inventors wrongfully assumed that the world’s one great war was over and that inventing powerful machines of destruction would show man the folly of warfare and the wisdom of peace. By setting Invention in 1943, two years prior to the unleashing of the most deadly weapon to date, the atomic bomb, Hunt allows us a glimpse of a man who believed in invention for invention’s sake who was coming up against the reality of what the world was becoming.

Hunt adds a sympathetic human element to the plot by introducing Louisa, a hotel chambermaid, into the life of Nikola Tesla. Louisa brings her own relationship with her father and a newly developing relationship with a man named Arthur into the tale and as she does so she becomes the window through which the reader is allowed to discover Nikola Tesla. Louisa, more than Tesla, serves to represent the everyman that the reader relates to. Her character not only introduces human romance into the plot, but she along with Tesla and several other minor characters, both historical and fictional, paint a portrait of an idealized and romanticized New York City. One of the most interesting characters in Hunt’s tale turns out to be a building in the city.

The Invention of Everything Else is a delightfully whimsical story that served to make me as curious about the structure and history of The Hotel New Yorker as Time and Again did with the Dakota. In reading up a bit about this book and its author I discovered that Samantha Hunt was allowed to tour some of the fascinating below-ground facilities that used to provide guests of the hotel with everything from barber shops to a direct tunnel like to Penn Station. My only disappointment as relates to the hotel as character was that I wish actual photographs of the hotel from that time had been included in the book like those of the Dakota, and New York City itself, were in Time and Again.

Early on in Invention it is apparent that Hunt can write. She weaves an imaginative tale that served to make sure that I never had the book far from me despite the many other activities I had going on this past weekend. It is a wonderfully told story that is well worth reading and yet it does have its imperfections. For one Hunt occasionally drops in story elements that feel as if they were added simply to share an interesting fact about one of the several historical characters who show up in the book. One such example is Edison’s contributions to the electric chair. Also, it takes a skilled craftsman to weave charming and quirky elements into an otherwise serious story and there were times when I wondered just whether or not the sum total of various character’s eccentricities would add up to something magical. Unfortunately the conclusion left some loose ends that I would rather have seen tied up. Which leads me to what I felt like was the biggest imperfection of the novel and that was the partially unsatisfying conclusion.

As a novel with a subtext of the loss of innocence and the ushering in of a more deadly and dangerous time the melancholic end notes fit well. And yet there were elements that I felt Hunt introduced, such as those surrounding the time travel theme, that at the very least were not handled the way I as a reader wanted them to be handled. If Hunt had given me a better clue as to what she was trying to say with those characters then perhaps I would have been satisfied despite the ending not being exactly what I wanted. However I found myself frantically reading the last several pages, very aware that I was coming to the end of the book, hoping that what I had just read wasn’t going to be the end of certain character’s story arcs. While there is certainly a hopeful romantic ending on some levels, I was left with a melancholy confusion mixed with hope, wondering just how I was supposed to feel about certain plot lines. The ending isn’t the kind that I feel the need to add a “warning: don’t blame me if you don’t like this book” label to like I did with The Brief History of the Dead,, however the optimism and magic I felt throughout 95% of the book certainly took a punch to the gut in the end.

3.75 out of 5 stars isn’t a bad rating. This book is a treasure on many levels. But an uneven ending and some cryptic loose ends makes what all along felt like a 5 out of 5 star novel feel a bit tainted. I certainly will be interested to see where Samantha Hunt’s career goes from here as she has all the makings of a phenomenal force in the fictional world.