by Sarah Hall
First published 2005
Cy Parks grows up in a seaside guest house for consumptives on England's northwest coast, where his mother Reeda tends to the ailing visitors. The boy watches the gray waters of Morecambe Bay and dreams of escape. His chance comes through Eliot Riley, a drinking man with Bolshevik sympathies who teaches Cy the craft of tattooing. Cy masters the needle and ink, then sails for America with ambition burning in his chest. He establishes himself as "The Electric Michelangelo" on Coney Island's carnival boardwalk, surrounded by roller coasters and freak shows during the peak of Edwardian amusement culture. Among the performers and hustlers, Cy meets Grace, an enigmatic circus artist from Eastern Europe. She asks him to tattoo eyes across every inch of her skin, a commission that draws him into obsession. The novel traces Cy's journey from the windswept English coast to the electric spectacle of American seaside entertainment, exploring how art and desire shape a man's destiny.
Genres: art, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biographical-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Coney Island, England, Morecambe Bay
Period: Edwardian
340 pages · Paperback · Harper Perennial