Is it not amazing how certain writers are able to come up with a believable and vastly entertaining story involving persons who have actually lived (Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse), much-retold sci-fi and still manage to give these a fresh spin (time travel and Martians!), a talking animal (a certain pigeon at the Bryant Park), a sappy love story (Louisa from the present and Arthur from the future), an undying declaration of love (Walter and his affection for his wife Freddie who has passed away more than two decades ago), and a long-standing friendship (Walter and Azor)?
The book opens with introspections of Tesla in his old age. Gradually, Hunt introduces her other characters one at a time and they at some point, manage to connect their personal histories with that of Tesla’s.
We get to know Tesla better – his childhood in Serbia, his eccentricities, his aversion to company, the myriad inventions in his head, his frustrations at how several of his ideas failed to come to pass for lack of financial support, his antipathy toward Edison and Marconi who he believed stole his ideas, and his decline towards senility when in his eighties he has started talking to pigeons and to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) who has long been dead. In his old age, Tesla would also suffer from his dire financial position and political persecution.
Hunt is an absolutely clever novelist who can teach writers like Audrey Niffenegger a thing or two on how to come up a tale wherein readers tacitly agree to suspend their disbelief instead of sniggering over the sheer ridiculousness of the tall tale.
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