The Electric Michelangelo

“Her gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative. The effect is intoxicating.”

— Financial Times

Summary

On the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, Cy Parks spends his childhood years first in a guest house for consumptives run by his mother and then as apprentice to alcoholic tattoo-artist Eliot Riley. Thirsty for new experiences, he departs for America and finds himself in 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, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her entire body in tattooed eyes.

Hugely atmospheric, exotic and familiar, The Electric Michelangelo is a love story and an exquisitely rendered portrait of seaside resorts on opposite sides of the Atlantic by one of the most uniquely talented novelists of her generation.

  • Confirms her status as one of the most significant and exciting of our younger novelists. The Electric Michelangelo is a work of unusual imaginative power and range, and it deserves a wide readership.

    Guardian

  • The torrential Lawrentian flow of her prose offers many heady pleasures.

    The Times

  • Her gorgeously embellished prose compels the narrative, along with the beguiling vignettes she conjures up . . . the effect is intoxicating.

    Financial Times

  • Sarah Hall’s second novel, is richly descriptive, an evocative exploration of misfits and exiles searching for a home.

    The Lady

  • Hall is a writer to indulge, and her sensuous, poetic prose is every bit as evocative as sand poured from a pocket at the end of a holiday.

    Daily Mail

  • Hall’s sensuous and brilliant imagery does not disappoint. The Electric Michelangelo is almost fantastic, in every sense of the word.

    INK Magazine

  • Sarah Hall’s second book reads with all the colour, guts and flair of the 19th century tale - spinner as it follows the story of Cy Parks from his beginnings in Morecambe Bay to adventures on Coney Island.

    The List

  • Hall conveys an arresting, colourful and complex world. To be likened to Angela Carter is high praise indeed and, like Carter, Hall’s flair for the original is utterly engaging.

    Jack

  • The Electric Michelangelo is a pleasure to read.

    Zembla

  • The 20th century whirls past like a carousel in this rollicking novel of fairground life, where eroticism and brutality pulse from every booth ... A dazzlingly atmospheric and imaginative read.

    Eve

  • Twisted and tantalising, this is beautifully written and a worthy successor.

    Ham and High

  • The writing is so polished that it is hard to believe the author is only 30.

    Sunday Telegraph

  • Wildly imagined and richly written. Prose as highly-coloured as Hall’s has to be savoured.

    Independent

Sarah Hall

Books

Helm. Coming June 2025.

About

Sarah Hall is one of the UK’s most talented authors. Twice nominated for Man-Booker Prize, the first and only writer to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice, she has written 10 highly acclaimed novels and short story collections.

Contact

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