2004 Man Booker Prize Shortlist

Information and Book Review

The Electric Michelangelo
General Information
	The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall Published by Faber & Faber UK Publication Date: 3/18/04
About the Author
	Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in January 1974, and grew up in Penrith, Cumbria. She studied at Aberyswyth University and gained an MA at St Andrews. She has taught Creative Writing at the Arvon Foundation and is the author of Haweswater which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in 2002, along with a Betty Trask Award. Sarah Hall lives in Cumbria.
Publisher's Comments	Opening in the seaside resort of Morecambe Bay during its early 1900s heyday, The Electric Michelangelo chronicles the remarkable life of Cy Parks. Spending his childhood helping his eccentric mother Reeda run her macabre guest house, he is then apprenticed to Eliot Riley, the greatesttattoo artist in the northern counties, from whom he learns his strange folk craft. After a decade of abuse and in the wake of Riley's violent death, Cy flees to America, where he sets up his own business on the infamous Coney Island boardwalk. In this riotous carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak shows, while the crest of the amusement industry wave is breaking, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious European immigrant and circus performer, who commissions him to cover her body entirely with tattooed eyes. Hugely atmospheric, anecdotal and historical, Sarah Hall's second novel casts an imaginative spell of local colour and lyrical prose.
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