From Morecambe Bay during its turn of the century heyday to Coney Island and its riotous carnival atmosphere, the novelist Sarah Hall has created a world between fact and fiction in which her main character, Cy Parks becomes a master tattooist.
His remarkable life and the characters he encounters - his mother Reeda and her macabre guest house which welcomes a strange bunch of women; the circus performer Grace, who has a horse in her apartment - but with whom he'll fall in love; and the man who trains him in his mysterious art, Eliot Riley, all come to life between the pages of her new novel, The Electric Michelangelo .
Sarah Hall joins Jenni to talk more about the book.
The Electric Michelangelo is published by Faber and Faber; ISBN: 0571219292