Dominic Smith continues his fascinating exploration of the progression of life through art. This time around it is the beginnings of filmmaking. It is 1962 and we find our protagonist, Claude Ballard, living out the remainder of his life in Hollywood at the Knickerbocker Hotel. He is just one guest amongst a number of eccentric, lonely and forgotten individuals from a time long past without a future to look forward to. His days are filled with collecting and peeling mushrooms.

It is on one of these days that Claude is approached by Martin, a university film student who is in search of an artist whom he believes created one of the greatest masterpieces in film, The Electric Hotel. A film that, after its initial release, disappeared forever, never to be seen again. From that day we are transported back to Claude’s life in 1896, to the moment when Claude begins his foray into film and first meets Sabine Montrose. Sabine is the ethereal, enigmatic stage siren who will become the star of his ill-fated movie, as well as his muse. She is the one who willleave him heartbroken and bereft.

This is an expansive novel, taking the reader from the silent era of filmmaking to the trenches of World War I and on to the assassination of J.F.K. The gruesome depictions of the victims of war leaves the reader without any doubt about the horrors committed during this time. But his descriptions elsewhere in the book were equally convincing; indeed, those of Australian stuntman Chip Spalding were ones for the ages.

I found myself at times to be so completely immersed in Smith’s unravelling of this era that I couldn’t help but wish that there really was a movie out there somewhere in the ether called The Electric Hotel, just waiting to be rediscovered under the floorboards of some ancient, lonely hotel.

Dianna Jarnet is a bookseller at Readings Hawthorn.