The Case of Curiosities

Allen Kurzweil

I'm not sure how to describe this book. I'll cop-out and give you the book description: "In France, on the eve of the Revolution, a young man named Claude Page sets out to become the most ingenious and daring inventor of his time. In the course of a career filled with violence and passion, Claude learns the arts of enameling and watchmaking from an irascible, defrocked abbi, apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller, and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker. But it is Claude's greatest device-a talking mechanical head-that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre." And there you have it :-) Kurzweil is an aquired taste. I really enjoyed his novel "The Grand Complication" so picked this one up because it's a precursor to that one (I read them in reverse order). I enjoyed them both but would recommend The Grand Complication over this one.