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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Jan 2004, 319 pages
Paperback:
Mar 2005, 336 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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It's 1922 and Martin Finch is on the case of a lifetime—to determine whether a beautiful Philadelphia socialite is able to contact the spirit realm. He is prepared to debunk a fraud but instead the man of science falls in love with the medium in this debut historical thriller.
In the tradition of Carter Beats the Devil and The Alienist—a historical page-turner and the debut of a spectacular young talent.
It is 1920s Philadelphia, a time when the feverish popular obsession with the paranormal is confronted by the inevitable ascendance of the scientific method. With everyone from Houdini to Arthur Conan Doyle weighing in on the existence of parapsychological phenomena, the media is as fixated on the sensational debate as scientists and would-be psychics. Indeed, in 1922, Scientific American offers five thousand dollars for evidence of "conclusive psychic manifestations."
Inspired by this real-life event, Inamorata follows Martin Finch, a twenty-three-year-old Harvard graduate student and member of Scientific American's investigative committee, on the case of a lifetime—an attempt to determine whether Mina Crawley, a beautiful Philadelphia socialite, is able to contact the spirit realm. In the tiny upstairs room of the Crawleys' elegant Rittenhouse Square townhouse, Finch is prepared to debunk a fraud. But instead the man of science breaks the cardinal rule of psychic investigation: Never fall in love with the medium...
Chapter 1
"Hypnotize her."
I looked at the girl Halliday had just shoved at me like a virgin sacrifice. She was a leggy little sophomore from Radcliffe, slim as a cigarette, with a black bob and painted brows that gave her a look of pretty astonishment. She gazed up at me in myopic perplexity, as if my face were a puzzle she'd completed only to find herself holding an unaccounted piece.
I looked at Halliday. "I beg your pardon?"
"Hypnotize her, Finch," he repeated. "Everyone knows you can do it."
"You're mistaken."
"Am I? Why don't we ask Dickie Hodgson's sister?"
Halliday gave me a challenging look. The smug son of a bitch knew he had me. I glanced past him to the nearest exit, clear across Emerson's student lounge, calculating the odds of making my escape before Halliday succeeded in drawing a crowd. A few years earlier I might've stood a chance, but ever since Prohibition attendance at the psychology department's illicit ...
Inamorata, Gangemi's first published novel, features a cast of skeptical graduate students, morphine addicts, beguiling spirit-mediums, sadistic gynecologists, peg-legged Filipino butlers, and a talkative ghost. For historical fiction buffs who like their reading matter a little bit thrilling and more than a touch on the strange side...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife
I adore séances, skeptical graduate students, peculiar sex scenes, beguiling and contra-dictory psychic mediums, and forgotten history Inamorata has all this and more. Mr. Gangemi has constructed his tale with skill, panache, and dry humor. I stayed up very late reading this, and the characters got into my dreams. It’s a wonderful book. Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng
Inamorata affectionately evokes the pop culture and idioms of the Prohibition era... Ken Kalfus, author of The Commissariat of Enlightenment
A glittering depiction of Jazz Age Philadelphia and a swift entertainment that conjures the forces shaping human destiny science, the supernatural and romantic love. Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club
I like to think I could not be hypnotized by even the most masterful attempt. Yet what else can I call the effect of this novel that had me unable to put it down for days straight? Its story of investigating mesmerism and trances among 1920s Philadelphia socialites is a mesmerizing and entrancing experience… A novel as smart as its protagonist.Interesting Link:
A reproduction of
Houdini's
pamphlet exposing Margery The Medium.
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