Utopian Man
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An exquisite historical novel about a remarkable man who chose his own path, charming and scandalizing others in equal measure—the cowinner of the Australian/Vogel Literary AwardIt's the 1880s and Marvellous Melbourne is a lavish and raucous city where anything can happen. Eccentric entrepreneur Edward William Cole is building the sprawling Cole's Book Arcade and filling it with whatever amuses him or supports his favorite causes: a giant squid, a brass band, monkeys, a black man whose skin has turned white, a Chinese tea salon, and of course, hundreds of thousands of books. When Edward decides to marry he advertises for a wife in the newspaper, shocking and titillating the whole town. To everyone's surprise he marries his broadsheet bride and the arcade grows into a monumental success. But the 1890s depression hits hard for Melbourne—and Edward—and the death of one of his children leaves him reeling. Grief, corruption, and a beautiful, unscrupulous widow all threaten to derail his singular vision. But it's not until he visits Chinatown one night—and his own deeply suppressed past—that the idealist faces his toughest challenge. This is the vivid, fascinating story of a man who lives life on his own terms, and leaves behind a remarkable legacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lang draws from her own biography of the larger-than-life Edward William Cole (E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow) for her engaging and buoyant debut novel, a cinematic historical. In 1883, in Melbourne, Australia, Cole opens Cole's Book Arcade, an extravagant bookstore that he hopes will become "a place of wonder." Suspecting that "it was just unnatural, in an evolutionary sense, living on his own," he places a newspaper advertisement soliciting a wife, receiving plenty of replies (some angry), though only one from an actual prospect: Eliza. Though Cole is "shocked" by Eliza's plainness, he marries her and in time dotes, perhaps too much, on the five children she bears him. Neither an economic depression, nor the death of a daughter from scarlet fever can deter Cole's Barnum-like showmanship and drive; he establishes a tea salon and imports marmoset monkeys to enliven the Arcade and lure crowds. Cole does well in business but is ridiculed as "an oddball entertainer"; he also feels "the lead weight of guilt" and failure when he discovers that his namesake son has become addicted to opium. As Cole grows older and frailer, seeming to enjoy his pet monkeys more than his family, he obsesses over the fate of "his singular, beloved life's work," the Arcade.
