The Electric Hotel
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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By:
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Dominic Smith
About this listen
From the New York Times best-selling author Dominic Smith, a radiant audiobook tracing the intertwined fates of a silent-film director and his muse.
Dominic Smith’s The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey - America’s first movie town - and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man’s doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.
For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard.
But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel - the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose - the past comes surging back. In his rundown hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration and Claude’s memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.
©2019 Dominic Smith (P)2019 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Vacationland
- By: Sarah Stonich
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge - only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather’s care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images "reflected across the mirrors of memory and water", much as the linked stories of Vacationland cast shimmering spells across distance and time.
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Reminded me of home
- By jill on 06-02-13
By: Sarah Stonich
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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The Eighth Detective
- A Novel
- By: Alex Pavesi
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked all the rules out – and wrote seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate. But that was 30 years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days. Until Julia Hart, a brilliant, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: An author hiding from his past and an editor keen to understand it.
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GOING IN MY TOP 10!!
- By Shaelyn on 08-07-20
By: Alex Pavesi
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Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
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A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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Dry Bones
- By: Peter May
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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What happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher at the École Nationale d’Administration, who trained some of France’s best and brightest as future prime ministers and presidents, vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. This ten-year-old mystery inspires a bet—one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse, France, instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose.
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Engaging hero, stellar narration
- By Janice on 11-01-13
By: Peter May
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Light Years
- By: James Salter
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach.
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Unfathomable Font of Blue: Life's Serial Goodbyes
- By W Perry Hall on 04-18-19
By: James Salter
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
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Prose style not to my liking
- By C.V. Cox on 10-18-20
By: V. E. Schwab
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Who Is Vera Kelly?
- By: Rosalie Knecht
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows.
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not a whole lot of spycraft just a good story
- By Kirra Krussman on 01-19-19
By: Rosalie Knecht
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The Price of Illusion
- A Memoir
- By: Joan Juliet Buck
- Narrated by: Joan Juliet Buck
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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From Joan Juliet Buck, former editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue, comes a dazzling memoir: a fabulous account of four decades spent in the creative heart of London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, chronicling Buck's quest to discover the difference between glitter and gold, illusion and reality, and what looks like happiness from the thing itself.
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Narcissistic name dropper
- By Marlette on 12-03-19
By: Joan Juliet Buck
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The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
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Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
What listeners say about The Electric Hotel
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Julianne
- 03-20-23
Narrator is stellar!
The story is nice, I did enjoy the whole thing, the structure, the organization, the story and characters. But the narrator my god! I want him to narrate everything, he’s perfect and his accents and voices are so perfect and made the whole thing much more enjoyable and so real. It felt like watching an old movie. Stellar performance. Loved listening to this.
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- Melissa Pattacini
- 08-14-24
The descriptions are so vivid!
This is an ever widening portal into the past. Wonderful characters, compelling stories - and a complete wrap up at the end, which is so unusual these days!
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- Steve
- 11-22-20
Historical fiction at its best
This book came as recommended to me based upon my previous reading. I downloaded it a while ago and forgot about it. When I discovered I had an unread book in my library I decided to give it a listen. What a transfixing great story about the beginnings of moving pictures World War I tuberculosis stunt work and Hollywood glamour. It’s also one of those great books that spans decades and allows the reader to find out what happens to all the characters he’s become so invested in. I really enjoyed this book and hope others do too
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3 people found this helpful
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- Vance
- 09-12-19
narrator worth it
the narrator made this book. last third was unneeded, but the rest of the book was very interesting.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Duncan Hastings
- 11-11-19
The eElectric Hotel
A wonderful story very well read. Loved it. Got me wondering how much of the story is based on life circumstances
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1 person found this helpful