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Loading... Distant Waves a Novel of the Titanic (edition 2009)by Suzanne Weyn (Author)
Work InformationDistant Waves by Suzanne Weyn
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Wow... You can judge a book by its cover, I was mesmerized by this one every page until the end... ( ) Garbage. The narrator is four years old for 42 pages and uses the words "violently, convulsing, frigidity, overwhelming, impulse, beseeched, reverie, reticence, condescension". She meets the great Nikola Tesla and listens to her mother have an entire conversation with him. The four year old manages to follow the whole thing and retain words like "electromechanical oscillator". She isn't an unacknowledged genius, here. Weyn doesn't seem to be self-aware of what she's doing. This continues. The novel is filled with cameos of celebrities from the time period. There's even a helpful author's note at the end to explain who they all are. It gets to a point where I put the book down and asked, outloud, "What am I reading?!". In chapter 10 Jane is standing in the penthouse of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel comparing Tesla to Einstein with Tesla's assistant while Guggenheim uses the phone in another room and his girlfriend dresses up Jane's sister in the next. None of this takes place on the Titanic. Character information is written like facts ripped from a biography. "I wish Jack wouldn't insist on being called Colonel Astor," Mr. Guggenheim cried. "It's so ridiculous. He donated his yacht and bought himself a brigade of volunteers just so he could have that ludicrous title! It's absurd." "Colonel Astor served his country with distinction during the Spanish-American War," Mr. Boldt insisted loyally. It's cringeworthy. Suzanne Weyn has written over 180 novels. She has had the chance to hone her craft. Clearly, neither she nor the people who publish her work give a s###. A lot of people say this book isn't any good because the centre plot point, the Titanic, doesn't appear til near the end. Which is fine, that's true, it doesn't. But if you treat it as a story that simply ends on the Titanic, it's a fine book. This is the book that made me interested in Tesla, and despite 75% of the characters being entirely fictional, I thoroughly enjoyed this new twist to the Titanic story that has been repeated over and over again. It made it unique! no reviews | add a review
Notable Lists
In the early twentieth century, four sisters and their widowed mother, a famed spiritualist, travel from New York to London, and as the Titanic conveys them and their acquaintances, journalist W.T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor, home, Tesla's inventions will either doom or save them all. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)569Science Fossils & prehistoric life Fossil MammaliaLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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