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London 2011, Catherine Gehrig, conservator at the Swinburne museum, learns of the unexpected death of her lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man she has to grieve in private. Given a special project away from prying eyes and mad with grief, the usually controlled and rational Catherine discovers a series of handwritten notebooks telling the extrordinary story behind the automata she is restoring. She starts to piece together both the clockwork puzzle and the story of the mechanical creature which was commissioned in 19th century Germany by an English man, Henry Brandling, as a 'magical amusement' for his consumptive son. Having been asked to leave his home by his wife, Henry turns his hurtful departure into an adventure that he records for his young child. But it is Catherine Gehrig, in a strangely stormy and overheated London nearly two hundred years later, who will find comfort and wonder in reading Henry's story. And it is the automata, in its beautiful, uncanny imitation of life, that will link two strangers confronted with the mysteries of life and death, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention and the body's astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.
Softcover. English. Publisher: Faber & Faber. 2012. 273 pp. Fair/Good. Book No: 7002258
