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Signal & Noise: A Novel, by John Griesemer
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Signal & Noise is the epic page-turning story of the laying of the trans-Atlantic cable, and the men and women who are caught in its monumental tide. It is also a novel about the collision of worlds seen and unseen: the present and the future; the living and the dead; the real and the imagined.
On a wet London morning in 1857, American engineer Chester Ludlow arrives on the muddy banks of the Isle of Dogs to witness the launch of the largest steamship ever built, the Great Eastern. Also amidst the tumultuous throng is Jack Trace, a lonely bachelor and sketch artist hoping to make his name as an illustrator and journalist in the hurly burly of Fleet Street. Other witnesses include a drunken German by the name of Marx; the child who will christen the massive vessel by the wrong name; and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the ship's apoplectic and dwarfish architect who will soon die in ignominy. As chief engineer for the Atlantic Cable Company, the charismatic Chester enters the orbit of business and showmanship embodied by J. Beaumol Spude, the bombastic Western beef magnate who will mastermind the funding of the project; Joachim Lindt, creator of the Phantasmagorium, an animated tableaux vivant; and his beautiful wife, the musician Katerina Lindt. Drawn by the demands and adventure of creating the first transoceanic telegraph, Chester leaves behind his fragile wife, Franny, at the family estate of Willing Mind in Maine.
Abandoned and still mourning the accidental death of their four-year-old daughter, Franny finds solace in the company of Chester's troubled brother, Otis, who introduces her to the mysteries of the world of spiritualism just as séancing is becoming all the rage in the jittery times leading up to the Civil War. As Chester achieves renown as the glamorous engineer of the trans-Atlantic project, Franny, desperate to contact her dead child, becomes the preeminent spirit conjuror of a war-torn America.
- Sales Rank: #1268007 in eBooks
- Published on: 2004-04-01
- Released on: 2004-04-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Many readers will find it difficult to believe that the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable in the 1860s can be a riveting subject for a novel. But John Griesemer's Signal & Noise is also a story of adultery, spiritualism, madness, and the Civil War: a vertiginous combination that beautifully evokes the contradictions of the mid-Victorian period. The world Griesemer describes ranges from New England drawing rooms to scientific meetings to the stench of the Thames at low-tide. He is good with sensory details (smells and textures, especially), and likes to linger in places that a Victorian novelist would have rushed past without mentioning. Almost nothing, even the tap-tap of telegraph signals, moves quickly in this novel, and the patient reader will be rewarded with gorgeous and unexpectedly moving set-pieces that remind one of the time it would have taken, each morning, just to fasten a corset or button a child's boot. Despite a slow beginning, crowded with characters of unequal interest, Signal & Noise turns into a page-turner, its several story-lines neatly dovetailing and continuing to surprise and delight, long after we have (perhaps, perhaps not) given up hope in that elusive copper connection between continents. --Regina Marler
From Publishers Weekly
Griesemer's vast historical novel, his follow-up to No One Thinks of Greenland, follows the attempts of engineers to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable in the 1850s and '60s. Chester Ludlow is the chief American engineer on the cable project. An investor in the cable syndicate persuades him to raise more money for the venture by doing a lecture tour; the main attraction of the tour is a new kind of mechanical diorama, the Phantasmagoria, that enacts the story of the transatlantic cable project for patrons as Chester narrates it and musician Katerina Lindt, the wife of the diorama's creator, Joachim, provides the accompaniment. While on tour, Chester's charisma so arouses Katerina that she stows away on his ship when he embarks on the next cable-laying expedition; the two become lovers, and Katerina leaves Joachim. Meanwhile, at the Ludlow family's house in Maine, Chester's brother, Otis, an engineer and mystic, is teaching Chester's wife, Franny, how to communicate with the dead. Franny is a former actress mourning the death of her four-year-old daughter; with Otis's help she becomes a renowned spiritualist. As Chester attempts to communicate across the ocean, Otis and Fanny are wiring up to the infinite. The story clips along through the exciting process of laying the actual cable, immerses us in the horrors of the American Civil War (during which Chester is recruited for war work) and climaxes with Chester's final expedition in 1865, when he must work with Katerina's ex-husband. Though Otis, who becomes pivotal in the novel, is somewhat underdeveloped, this is an accomplished, gripping work.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Griesemer's second novel, following No One Thinks of Greenland (2001), is a rousing historical adventure set in the mid-nineteenth century, an ambitious, technology-obsessed era much like our own. Brilliant engineer Chester Ludlow is soon transformed into a mesmerizing showman when he becomes involved in the laying of the trans-Atlantic cable. Attempting to raise the cash needed to launch the initiative, Ludlow travels with a musical "Phantasmagorium Show," which bowls over willing investors with its complex scene-shifting and inspiring narration. Soon the money is pouring in, and Chester becomes a celebrity and begins a passionate affair with the beautiful piano player. Meanwhile, his wife, Lily, still grieving the death of their child some years before, embarks on an intense spiritual quest in an attempt to communicate with her dead daughter. She is guided by Chester's brother, Otis, a world-traveling seeker who has studied with a powerful shaman capable of out-of-body experiences. This summary cannot do justice to a novel that features an immense cast of characters, head-spinning changes in scene (from the bleak coast of New Hampshire to the gambling dens of London), and a truly impressive grasp of the art of creation, whether scientific, spiritual, or artistic. Griesemer effortlessly animates a tumultuous time through one extraordinary family, provocatively pointing up the thin line separating ambition and hubris, visionaries and quacks, signal and noise. An incredibly rich and rewarding read. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant
By A Customer
There is so much packed in this gripping novel: the laying of the transatlanitc cable, the failed launch of the Great Eastern (the world's largest ship at the time); The Civil War, Karl Marx!, the story of a crumbling family in the wake of a child's sudden death, the dawn of the Technological Age, and great, powerful (Dickensian even) writing. I bought this for Memorial Day weekend and finished this morning. Couldn't put it down. Best book I've read since The Corrections.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A book that grows on you
By Debra Hamel
Signal and Noise is a sprawling novel that follows the lives of a handful of characters for roughly a decade during the mid-19th century. All of the figures on whom Griesemer focuses are somehow involved, whether directly or indirectly, in the various attempts made during that period to lay the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. The book's principal character, to the extent that it has one, is Chester Ludlow, the chief engineer of the Atlantic Cable Company and the genius behind the paying-out mechanism that will, it is hoped, prevent the cable from breaking while it is unspooling. Chester's wife Franny, still grieving from the accidental death of their young daughter, and his fragile brother Otis are also central to the story.
Griesemer's book, nearly 600 pages long, covers a lot of ground--not only the cable and the wave of progress of which it was a part, but also the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination, spiritualism, the stinking sewers of London, and the building of the world's largest ship (at the time), the Great Eastern. The book is a historical narrative, but it is not at all clear from the text how historically accurate it is, or which of the characters if any were historical figures. An author's note ought to be added to clarify matters.
Griesemer's novel is not enthralling, or at least not obviously so. Indeed, it is downright slow at times. Yet perhaps two-thirds of the way through it becomes clear that the author has created a world, or described a world, that will have staying power in your imagination. The book does not demand your attention in the way that a thriller does, but it does, by the end, have a claim on you.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
one of the better books this year
By B. Capossere
it's always a pleasure to jump into a book that decides to take on so much. In this case, the laying of the transatlantic cable, the Civil War, the sewage plight of London, the spiritualist fad, and then more personally, grief over the death of a child, failed marriages, falls from a height, and more. There is a wealth of plot and an even greater wealth of character and Griesemer succeeds in handling it all with ease and aplomb. The history and technological details are interesting in their own right, but they never overshadow the characters and their own stories. Griesemer takes his time in this work and therefore everything that happens to these characters, everything that serves to make us laugh or moves us or surprises us is earned. In such a large, sprawling work it would have been easy to have entire sections weaker than others, but that is not the case. The book holds at a high level from beginning to end. One of the best reads I've had this year.
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