Signal And Noise | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Signal And Noise

Jul 1, 2025 4:07 AM

Author:John Griesemer

Signal And Noise

On a dark, wet London morning in 1857, Chester Ludlow, an American engineer, arrives on the muddy banks of the Isle of Dogs to witness the launch of the largest steamship ever built, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's The Great Eastern. Ludlow, propelled by fierce ambition, is a key member of a small consortium whose ambition is to lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He has abandoned his fragile wife, Franny, on their estate in Maine. The couple are still in deep mourning for their daughter who died in a tragic accident, aged only four. The charismatic Ludlow meets a woman who will exert the most powerful influence on his life and work - the beautiful and enigmatic Katerina Lindt. As both Ludlow and Franny's lives start to unravel, they find themselves caught up in a relentless tide of change crashing across both continents and blurring the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

Reviews

A riveting read - big, bold, rambunctious and very rewarding

—— Richard Russo, author of EMPIRE FALLS

Griesemer's energetic plotting and prose mirror the vigour of the age he describes

—— New York Times

Ambition, failure, triumph, love, betrayal, farce, and spirt-conjuring - these are some of the subjects powerfully animated in this grand novel. John Griesemer is a masterful writer

—— Joanna Scott, author of ARROGANCE

Griesemer's novel has the courage of ambition and deserves serious praise for that alone

—— Time Out

Capacious, gutsy and gratifying

—— Joseph O'Connor, author of STAR OF THE SEA

A quietly unsettling yet also charming tale. The atmosphere and story are pure Orwell, but Saramago's southern Europe rhythms and colour-soaked imagery link him even more firmly to a gritty yet dreamlike magic realism

—— Carson Howat , Scotsman

Saramago can transform banal sentiments into unexpected profundities

—— David McAllister , TLS

Earle seems to have little trouble expanding his range from a three-minute song to a 300-page narrative... And though the novel comes no closer to establishing the facts of Hank Williams's death, it certainly reveals a good deal of truth behind it

—— Alfred Hickling , Guardian

A witty, heartfelt story of hope, forgiveness and redemption

—— Booklist

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