The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
thiscunt_likes_bo0ks's review against another edition
4.0
(Rating possibly veering towards 5 stars).
“Maybe memory is just electricity passing through us. Old voltage in the joints.”
As a sucker for historical fiction, I loved this book, the way it meandered and looked at the invention of film and how much of history is lost to us. The writing was beautiful and melancholic throughout the book and the characters were fascinating. I loved all the details the author put in to make it rich and all the places seemed real. It was like being inside an old film.
The WW1 scenes were gripping but the highlight for me was the Electric Hotel itself, Claude’s film that we see being made on the Palisades in New Jersey. It’s dark and thrilling and wonderfully described, the writing and scenes reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje.
Also highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.
“Claude suddenly saw the widow’s face in at the window of the hotel, as she looked down into the puzzle of the yew maze. The reflection, he realised, was not bleak and pallid, but radiant, her face burning, and somehow purified by the tubercular fevers. He remembered seeing that look in his own sister before her death. Her face, smooth and pale as soapstone. Her eyes, green and flinty and shining. Her lips, full and blood red. Had she been seducing death in her final days? Or courting that other eternal self at the windowpane? The dark eternal ‘this that I love.’ ... They wanted to burn her alive. But the truth was, Claude realised, she’d been burning alive for some time. In love with her own apparition in the windowpane.”
“Maybe memory is just electricity passing through us. Old voltage in the joints.”
As a sucker for historical fiction, I loved this book, the way it meandered and looked at the invention of film and how much of history is lost to us. The writing was beautiful and melancholic throughout the book and the characters were fascinating. I loved all the details the author put in to make it rich and all the places seemed real. It was like being inside an old film.
The WW1 scenes were gripping but the highlight for me was the Electric Hotel itself, Claude’s film that we see being made on the Palisades in New Jersey. It’s dark and thrilling and wonderfully described, the writing and scenes reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje.
Also highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.
“Claude suddenly saw the widow’s face in at the window of the hotel, as she looked down into the puzzle of the yew maze. The reflection, he realised, was not bleak and pallid, but radiant, her face burning, and somehow purified by the tubercular fevers. He remembered seeing that look in his own sister before her death. Her face, smooth and pale as soapstone. Her eyes, green and flinty and shining. Her lips, full and blood red. Had she been seducing death in her final days? Or courting that other eternal self at the windowpane? The dark eternal ‘this that I love.’ ... They wanted to burn her alive. But the truth was, Claude realised, she’d been burning alive for some time. In love with her own apparition in the windowpane.”
kcrkcr's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
thain's review against another edition
4.0
Intriguing look at the very early days of cinema through the story of a reclusive filmmaker whose lost masterpiece is restored by a film historian, with flashbacks to the movie's creation at a Palisades, NJ, studio. A vivid cast of characters are brought together by various paths and then torn apart after the premiere. Fine and insightful storytelling.
sharonfalduto's review against another edition
3.0
A novel written mostly about the early days of cinema (why do I keep reading those?) but written from the perspective of the 1960s, when a film dissertation student finds old director Claude Ballard in a dingy hotel in Hollywood and asks him about his days as a promising film director and auteur, and read about his rise from an apprentice photographer to a filmmaker, the famous actress who helps make his career, all against the backdrop of the early 20th century.
books__brews_and_booze's review against another edition
5.0
I daresay Dominic Smith is one of those writers of whom I want to read everything by. His use of language and turns of phrase are so beautiful. For example:
“Sabine often thought that she had been preparing for exile her whole life. For years she imagined the endless white days in a stone cottage along the Brittany coast, saw herself as an old woman eating solitary meals, moving from room to room
In her robe, a dog-eared novel by the bathtub.
Her eventual banishment, whenever she’d conjured it, was listless, sun-bleached, and aloof. But after five years of living under an assumed name, she also understood that exile was a kind of devotion.”
Five stars. So well done. I really wanted to know what happened to the characters and almost wanted to read faster so I could find out faster! :)
But I didn’t want to miss any of Smith’s use of language. I do wish more of Claude’s childhood and foraging with his father were included. I found that part interesting and wanted more of it.
I received this book as an Arc from a Goodreads Giveaway, with gratitude. This is my honest opinion.
“Sabine often thought that she had been preparing for exile her whole life. For years she imagined the endless white days in a stone cottage along the Brittany coast, saw herself as an old woman eating solitary meals, moving from room to room
In her robe, a dog-eared novel by the bathtub.
Her eventual banishment, whenever she’d conjured it, was listless, sun-bleached, and aloof. But after five years of living under an assumed name, she also understood that exile was a kind of devotion.”
Five stars. So well done. I really wanted to know what happened to the characters and almost wanted to read faster so I could find out faster! :)
But I didn’t want to miss any of Smith’s use of language. I do wish more of Claude’s childhood and foraging with his father were included. I found that part interesting and wanted more of it.
I received this book as an Arc from a Goodreads Giveaway, with gratitude. This is my honest opinion.
renee_pompeii's review against another edition
3.0
Well written historical fiction that traces the early days of cinema from Paris and the Lumieres to New Jersey and New York before WWI. It didn’t grab me but I’m glad I stuck with it, the second half of the book had some nice twists and turns. Excellent historical detail.
lily_phaeton's review against another edition
4.75
This was beautifully written and made me cry like a baby but I feel like it just needed a little something extra to keep me engaged. I felt like there was no excitement to pick it up again, but I was grateful when I did :)