<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/RV7LUFMJI.DTL&t ype=books> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/RV7LUFMJI.DTL&ty pe=books
SFGate.com The Invention of Everything Else By Samantha Hunt HOUGHTON MIFFLIN; 257 PAGES; $24 If you aren't familiar with Nikola Tesla, turn on the radio or consider the workings of the electric chair. Born in 1856, this Serbian immigrant is best known as the mastermind behind AC electricity and as a great competitor to Thomas Edison and his DC. Tesla wasn't just a genius but also a mad scientist, and to accomplish what he did, one might need at least a little lightning-bolt-through-the-brain madness. He had a ferocious, undying loyalty to science and to his visionary ideas; he can be considered a science prophet. His mind's eye was sapient and prescient. Lucky for us that Samantha Hunt, in her highly imaginative second novel, "The Invention of Everything Else," is as obsessed as a writer can be about Tesla. We're made aware of this in the book's stunning opening pages, which take off in a voice finely crafted to carry Hunt's history-steeped tale. Tesla was a rather unusual man for his time - for any time, really. What other way to describe someone who hears messages in storms and from air particles? One with nature, he sees no boundary between man and the atoms and molecules of which he is made. In Hunt's book, Tesla addresses the dust drifting in the air: "Here is the tiniest bit of a woman from Bath Beach who had her hair styled two days ago, loosening a few small flakes of scalp in the process. ... Here is a speck of evidence from a shy graft inspector. Maybe he lived in the borough of Queens. Maybe a respiratory influenza killed him off in 1897." When we meet Tesla it is 1943, and he's 86, living on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, where he actually did reside in his later years. Although Hunt sticks closely to the incredible facts of the inventor's life, she introduces her own invention with Louisa, a curious 24-year-old chambermaid who has the habit of snooping in guests' drawers. She discovers Tesla's manuscript-littered room, "a mad scientist's dollhouse," and immediately takes an interest and befriends him. The two bond over their common love of pigeons; Tesla considers a pigeon he met at Bryant Park his wife (also true). "Humans," however, "remain a far greater challenge" to him. Told in alternating chapters between Louisa's story - in the third person - and Tesla's - in the first person- the novel is equal parts Louisa's awakening and Tesla's demise. Hunt cleverly uses Louisa and her father, Walter, both enraptured fans of radio and its storytellers, such as Orson Welles and his "War of the Worlds" telecast, to embody 1940s New York City. Meanwhile, Tesla mysteriously tells his life story to an unacknowledged someone named Sam. Could this be the author herself? We don't ever find out. But we do learn a lot about the cutthroat world of inventors and, heartbreakingly, about how Tesla's Nobel Prize in physics was rescinded. A destitute Tesla can barely defend his name, let alone his psyche. Tesla claims to communicate with Mars. He chases the future, imagining "[a]utomobiles that run on water. Surgery that never even punctures the skin. Wireless transmission of intelligence and energy." This plays off scenes in which Louisa's father is obsessed with a time machine that might reunite him with his deceased wife, and Louisa finds love with another man as she romances science. To top it off, the FBI is onto Tesla for his plans for a death ray and Louisa is onto the FBI, protecting her dear scientist. "The Invention of Everything Else" loses some of its force in the second half as Hunt delves into Tesla's strained, loveless personal life. Also, parts of Louisa's story seem overly cinematic and dramatic, perhaps the consequence of trying to make Louisa's story hold its own against Tesla's. Ultimately, it may be impossible to compete with such an extraordinary story. Tesla is one of those rare geniuses whose mind operates like a child's, free to color outside the lines. Hunt's novel reminds us that science necessitates creativity, which also, of course, is the essence of literature. Linda Burnett is a New York writer. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/RV7LUFMJI.DTL This article appeared on page M - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
