The Electric Michelangelo

This title was shotlisted for the Booker Prize. Opening on the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, on the remote north-west coast of England, "The Electric Michelangelo" is a novel of love, loss and the art of tattooing. In the uniquely sensuous and lyrical prose that has already become her trademark, Sarah Hall's remarkable new novel tells the story of Cy Parks, from his childhood years spent in a seaside guest house for consumptives with his mother, Reeda, to his apprenticeship as a tattoo artist with Eliot Riley a scraper with a reputation as a Bolshevik and a drinker to boot.

His skills acquired and a thirst for experience burning within him, Cy departs for America and the riotous world of the Coney Island boardwalk, where he sets up his own business as 'The Electric Michelangelo'. In this carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak-shows, while the crest of the Edwardian amusement industry wave is breaking, Cy becomes enamored with Grace, a mysterious East European immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her body entirely with tattooed eyes.