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    The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel

    Written by Carey Wallace

    Narrated by Aasne Vigesaa

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Carolina Fantoni, a young contessa in nineteenth-century Italy, is going blind. But nobody believes her: neither her parents, nor her fiancé, the town's most sought-after bachelor. Only her friend Turri, the eccentric local inventor, understands. But as darkness erases her world, Carolina discovers one place she can still see-in her dreams. In them, she can not only see, but fly, exploring new worlds in her own mind.

    Losing her sight isolates Carolina. Even writing letters with pen and ink proves almost impossible-until Turri invents a new machine: the world's first typewriter. His gift ignites a passionate love affair that will mark both of their lives forever.

    Based on the true story of the blind woman who inspired the invention of the typewriter, The Blind Contessa's New Machine is an iridescent jewel of a novel that celebrates the triumph of the imagination and proves that love is the mother of invention.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 8, 2010
    ISBN9781441881366
    Unavailable
    The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel
    Author

    Carey Wallace

    Carey Wallace was raised in small towns in Michigan. She is the author of The Blind Contessa's New Machine, and lives and works in Brooklyn. Visit her at www.careywallace.com.

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    Reviews for The Blind Contessa's New Machine

    4/5

    21 ratings19 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This beautiful book was recommended to me by a cousin of the author. It is a wonderful, quick read and very worth the time.
    • 4/5
      Carolina Fantoni is beautiful, desirable, and going blind. Her only friend is Turri, an eccentric and creative young man who invents things that horrify the locals. Her misfortune is to be married to a superficial pretty boy who adores her, but only for her beauty. Turri, also mis-married, is the love of her life which forces them into an affair. He understands her and invents a typewriter so she can write letters to her father and to him.Carolina has loved the man-made lake on her father’s lemon lands where she lives and dreams in a little house. There she and Turri enjoy their trysts. With her loss of sight, Carolina’s dependence on and appreciation of her own imagination increases, drawing the two closer emotionally. In her dreams she takes flight and in her waking hours she seeks Turri’s company until the day when his son stumbles up the path to the lake house, searching for his father.This is an enchanting and bittersweet love story based on the life of the woman who inspired the invention of the first typewriter.
    • 5/5
      This book has a nice, easy-to-read storyline. The characters are vivid and enjoyable. The descriptions are detailed enough to pull you into the story, but not so detailed that you get lost in them. Overall, I liked this book.
    • 5/5
      Received from First Reads on Goodreads. When you alight from your carriage onto the cobblestone drive of a home in Victorian Italy, you enter the world of Contessa Carolina, a young woman who loses her eyesight soon after her marriage to Pietro. Casey Wallace writes a lyrical first novel filled with imagery and eloquence. While the story was quiet and simple, I gave five stars for her creative writing.
    • 4/5
      This is a rather short book. According to the book jacket, the book is based on a historical woman. Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono. The onset of her blindness supposedly led to the invention of the first working typewriter.Reading the story was like reading and getting bits and pieces of the complete picture which seems appropriate considering the main character. The imagery with which the main character sees her world as she begins to lose her sight is fascinating - visual and colorful. Even after completely losing her sight, she describes her dreams because that is the one place she can still see. The ending left me wondering and wanting to learn more about her life and the life of the inventor of the "writing machine". Unfortunately, I don't know if much information is available. None of the writing machines have survived although some of the letters she wrote apparently have.Incidentally, the man Pellegrino Turri is also credited with the invention of the carbon paper. He used the carbon paper merely to provide the ink for his "writing machine."
    • 4/5
      THE BLIND CONTESSA'S NEW MACHINECarolina Fantoni, is a fast read and a lovely little book about a young woman living in the 19th century. She is slowly going blind. She loses her vision slowly and shares this fact and much of her time with her Turri, a older married friend who is a bit of a love interest. She is in an arranged marriage with a patronizing and over protective husband and finds friendship and happiness when she is spending time with Turri.Turri invents the typewriter for Carolina and helps expand her world in a meaningful way through his invention and his friendship. It is such a special gift and the way Ms. Wallace portrays the interactions are romantic, considerate and nostalgic. It has a bit of an Austin feel in that I did not want the book to endNote: This is my second review of this book. I posted the first review when I first received it but apparently did not save it. I loved this little book and hope to read more by Ms. Wallace. I feel bad since this was a first read and it appears I did not post it correctly. My apologies. I heatedly recommend this and would also like to see it used with young adults in a class when there could be discussions regarding the style and feel of the novel. Enjoy.
    • 5/5
      A privileged childhood, a wonderful friend, a doting father, her own cottage by the lake...what more could a girl ask for......Carolina's life was like a fairy tale come true. All was perfect until she knew something was wrong with her eyesight...no one believed her, but she knew she was going blind. No one except Turri her childhood friend that is...he believed everything she said. He told her that she would be totally blind by New Year's Day....she didn't want to accept it would happen, but Turri was correct as usual. New Year's Day was when it happened.Carolina's days were never ending. The nights were better because she was able to see again in her dreams, but all remained dark the minute she woke up. She began to roam the house at night feeling for familiar things. What was frightening about her nightly roaming was she would hear footsteps that would stop when she stopped and doors that kept creaking in various rooms. Then one day Carolina HAD to see Turri, and she made her way to the lake and the cottage where she and Turri had always met. Right after the trip to the lake, whenever she tried to leave the house, she but wasn't able to get out...the door was locked. One night while she roamed, she chased someone into the basement and found a surprise. The following day Turri visited her with another surprise....a writing machine....she could now type out notes to friends without spilling ink everywhere, and most importantly she could write to Turri..The book turned from a story about a girl held prisoner by her blindness and her husband to a mystery about the characters and the person who roamed the house at night.I enjoyed the book…it was a heartwarming read even though the blindness factor was distressing. I would recommend reading it while wrapped up in a blanket on a cold, winter’s night next to the warm fireplace. 5/5
    • 4/5
      At one point this summer I decided I would not buy any new books for the rest of the year. I ultimately failed at that, but I have been reading more print and audiobooks from my local library. Because I’m going to my library more often, different books are catching my eye. The Blind Contessa’s New Machine is one such book. It was being displayed prominently. It looked so pretty and compact that I had to pick it up to learn more.  Discovering on the dust jacket that the  author grew up in Michigan, clinched the deal.  I rented the book and began reading it that afternoon.I read this book a little over two months ago now. It was a quick read about Carolina Fantoni, the young and coddled daughter of wealthy parents. She spends a great deal of time in the small cottage near the lack on her parent’s property. Her father built for her mother, but it was Carolina who took to her father’s gifts. She has frequent conversations with her parents’ married neighbor. He is an inventor and a good listener. Turri was the first to believe her when she said that she was going blind. Her parents and fiancé brushed off her concerns until they would have been blind not to realize that she was. After she becomes fully blind and Turri invents a writing machine to help her keep in contact with the world outside her husband’s home.I am glad that I picked this book up. At the time I had been reading books outside of my normal reading. This book felt so comfortable to read. Having now read The Typist, I would categorize them in a similar fashion. I can still recall minute plot points and, if I close my eyes, I can help Carolina feel her way from her married home to her cottage by the lake.I cannot say that this book will change your life, but it would be perfect to have on hand for a time when you’ve read a particularly trying book or when you’re snowed in and have no place to go but to sit by your fireplace and read.  It's delicate and soothing.  Another fine example of a #pureMichiganread.
    • 5/5
      The Book Report: On the eve of her wedding to the most eligible, handsomest bachelor in her small world, Contessa Carolina Fantoni announces to him that she is going blind. He laughs dismissively, kisses her indulgently, thus setting the tone for their entire relationship. After full blindness sets in, her eccentric childhood friend and neighbor, an eccentric married inventor and amateur scientist, creates for her the world's first typewriter, that she may continue to communicate with the outside world. And thus the passionate affair begins, one that would, if either had let it, have destroyed two marriages and possibly four lives. That, in the end, the two people remain married to spouses less than perfect is hardly a new plot or a shocking denoument. But in its bittersweet presentation, it's clear that the author understands the losses of compromise and accommodation that relationships demand of us.My Review: I am mortally afraid of only a few things in this life: 1) Blindness; 2) being eaten by a shark; and 3) suffocating/drowning. My mother went blind a year or more before she died, and it was a torture. She read passionately, and suddenly couldn't; she was never able to adapt to audiobooks. This rings me like a bell, a tocsin of terror that has me sweating and crying as I type this on a c-o-l-d night. And this book's careful, polished prose made that horrific nightmare (literally for me, at least once a year) endurable, survivable, where in less skilled hands I would simply have burned the book and paid the library for it.How she did this is, she presented the onset and completion of the process in a series of vignettes that define what it is to see, and to judge the world on what is seen; Wallace makes that process so arbitrary, so essentially meaningless, that as the Contessa charts her progress into eternal night, she and the reader understand that vision as primary perception is a habit of mind. The Contessa plumbs the darkness fearlessly. She lives in it, after she accepts its permanence, with more grace than she appeared to muster during her sighted years.It's quite a lovely achievement, and it's told in lovely sentences. Wallace, whose author photo rather distressingly resembles a high-school senior picture, had an excellent editor, and handed that editor a lovely book to begin with, you can be sure. This sort of prose doesn't get forged into being on an editor's anvil, it gets the spurs and cracks annealed out of it. Something of the book's raw state remains, thank goodness, because there are some places where opportunities are missed and others are simply AWOL where they would have been welcome. Why thank goodness? Because if this effort were to be perfect, I'd have to hunt this youngster down and kill her in furious writerly envy, that's why.And I don't want to go to jail over a book.
    • 4/5
      I didn't realize in reading it that it was historical fiction. I found the ending to be a letdown and would have liked more detail about the characters' later lives.
    • 3/5
      Up until the last few pages I would have given it four stars. It was unusual, had a certain poetry to it, and created full characters in 207 pages, but the romantic in me felt cheated by the ending.Eighteen-year-old Contessa Carolina Fantoni is going blind. It’s happening gradually and no one in her family believes her. After all, she’s always been slightly dreamy and odd; never preening and directing her attentions to marriage as do the other young women in her Victorian Italian setting. It’s to everyone’s amazement that Carolina ends up married to Pietro, the most eligible bachelor of their circle. Carolina’s real soul-mate is the eccentric inventor Turri, her childhood friend who is ten years her senior and now in an arranged marriage. He’s the only one who believes Carolina and the only one who takes action to free her from her encroaching darkness.This slim debut novel has a beautiful fairy tale quality to the writing style as well as a Gothic tone with things that go bump in the night. The fully-developed characters are not all black and white, and the fact that it is based on the true invention of the typewriter adds an interesting dimension.As Carolina sinks into darkness and her freedom is restricted she begins to take flight in her dreams. Will this be enough to carry her through life? As Pietro gains more control over her and Turri gets caught up with his new family, will it have to suffice?
    • 4/5
      This is a lovely little book with a rather misleading title. The story is very basic- a young Italian woman, Carolina Fantoni, discovers that she is going blind. At first, no one will accept this fact except her best childhood friend, an eccentric scientist named Turri. Carolina adjusts to her change in life by retreating to her mind, where she forces herself to remember everything she can, painting detailed pictures in her head. She also learns to navigate the physical world by memorizing landmarks. In the meantime she marries Pietro, considered the best catch in her universe by all her contemporaries. He protects her to point of locking her into the house at night. By following unnamed "ghosts", Carolina discovers a secret passage out through the basement and begins a series of nocturnal wonderings, sometimes meeting up with Turri. She is able to visit her world in her dreams, where she learns to fly above her beloved lake to view life below in all its extravagant colors and shapes. In spite of her abilities to function, she becomes more and more locked in her mind, until Turri presents her with an early form of typewriter, allowing her to again communicate in written words. Her relationship with Turri deepens, and leads to an ending I won't reveal so as not to spoil the book.The strength of this novella is not the story, but the writing. It is pure poetry. The imagery is exquisite. Sometimes it is difficult to tell if we are traveling physically with Carolina, or accompanying her in a dream. It doesn't really matter. I'm actually glad that I listened to this one, because I was able to close my eyes and visualize Carolina's world through another sense, rather than through my eyes.
    • 5/5
      "Quintessential Prose Floats Above the World of the Sightless"Carolina, a newly engaged woman surrounded by the beauty of a 19th century Italian villa, revels in her daydreams until she realizes she is going blind. Her family worries if their villa’s shady garden can sustain a grove of lemon trees while Carolina observes rather than fears her encroaching blindness.Ironically, Carey Wallace’s evocative prose is awash with images that invite the eye to retrace many a sentence. The author then masterfully invites us into the world of the sightless with descriptions of the other senses spilling over each page. “The woods chatter.” “The insect’s strong body beat against her eyelids.” “Sugar. She lifted her finger from her tongue.” Under Wallace’s pen, Carolina experiences the world so clearly, we are stunned to discover that she needs a writing machine. I need not comment about the love story in the plot as other reviewers have. Frankly, plot was quite secondary in this reader’s mind to the perception of how well Carolina lived in her dark world. When her other senses do not give her enough, she wills her dreams to take her to places where she can envision what she loves.This extraordinary debut novel moved me with its insight and eloquence. I disagree with the review that cited blindness as being the central idea in the book. I found the novel remarkably illuminating and an absolute delight to read.Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont
    • 5/5
      The Blind Contessa's New Machine - What a clumsy title for a lovely little book! This is the story of Carolina Fantoni, a young contessa, adventurous and independent, who goes blind. No one of her acquaintance knows how to treat her once she goes blind so she becomes totally isolated and trapped in her own home. An intelligent and resourceful woman she learns to travel and fly in her dreams. Then a childhood friend, Turri, an eccentric inventor builds her a typewriter to help her reconnect with the world. The invention of the typewriter has unforeseen consequences and both their lives are changed.To begin with the plot of this book is interesting and unusual and the author makes good use of it. She explores what it must have been like to be so afflicted in a time were was no awareness of the blind and how to help them. Carolina's utter isolation and how she, and the people around her, handle it were fascinating topics to consider. However, what really makes this book is the gorgeous, poetic writing. The details are all written in with an artist's touch until I could clearly see with all my senses. Carolina's lake, in particular, feels like a real place that I could visit anytime. The dust jacket calls this "an iridescent jewel of a novel" and I couldn't agree more!
    • 3/5
      Carolina Fantoni is an interesting girl. Despite the time frame she spends a lot of time alone at her man made lake. She, like the others in town harbors a secret hope that she will win the heart of the handsome and charismatic Pietro. Turri has all the locals shaking their heads. He muses about unimportant things and conducts odd experiments. Carolina and Turri become fast friends, watching the rain together and coming up with various improbable experiments. That is until she is married and quickly goes blind. While their relationship will blossom, Turri makes her a machine to write with making her the envy of the town.My cookie cutter description is a lot like how The Blind Contessa's New Machine reads. It's interesting, but very predictable. For a true story it does alright by it's characters. Carolina is hard to understand, her blindness doesn't seem to bother her. Nothing really seems to bother her until she can't see Turri. Pietro is easier to understand, he's beautiful and privileged and because of that he has a kind of arrogance that only comes out when all other charming have failed. Lastly there's Turri. I loved Turri, he was excentric and didn't mind being the talk of the town. Even so he acknowledged his reputation as a crazy man making crazy machines. He's a treat to read because he is so full of wonder.The story itself is nothing special. Girl is friends with Boy, Girl likes other Boy, Girl and Boy 2 get married and Girl starts and affair with original Boy. Place everyone in the early 1800's and make the Girl blind and that is The Blind Contessa's New Machine. Even though it's fairly simple it was an enjoyable read. Carolina's blindness left me pondering my own vision. She had so much to overcome once she lost her sight, especially since she was in a new house, and I wondered how I'd hold up in the same situations. Her dreams were less of a pleasure to read. There were far to many and they were all about her running around her house and her lake and looking for Turri. They got really repetitive and at some points were happening ever three or four pages.In short, if you like historical fiction, novels set in Italy or novels the deal prominently with blindness, The Blind Contessa's New Machine is worth picking up, just don't expect to much from it.
    • 5/5
      From My Blog...Carey Wallace reminds readers how truly beautiful literature can be, in her masterfully written debut, The Blind Contessa’s New Machine. The reader is transported back to 19th century Italy where young Carolina Fantoni describes her childhood, love of nature and solitude, dreams to marry Pietro, and of the odd tinker, Turri, who becomes far more than in the days of their childhood friendship. The day Carolina is to marry Pietro, she knows she is going blind and no one believes her, save her dear friend Turri. Carolina’s life quickly changes and as she loses her sight she gains an internal clarity. Through it all, Wallace provides the reader with beautiful and quite vivid details of what the Contessa is recalling, with breath-taking clarity.Wallace writes with extremely brilliant imagery, lyrical prose and in depth descriptions of her characters. The novel itself is rather short, yet the story line is quite powerful, endearing and memorable. The Blind Contessa’s New Machine is a story of love, loss, and endurance. I would not hesitate to recommend The Blind Contessa’s New Machine and even though it is a short and quick novel, it would be a lovely one to discuss with a group.
    • 4/5
      While this isn't a novel that I can rave about, I did enjoy it and recommend it as a quick and light summer read. One of its strong points is Wallace's fine development of atmosphere. There's a dreamy, sensual quality about her descriptions that perfectly fits the story of a young contessa adapting to losing her eyesight and dreaming her way back to beloved familiar places and exciting new places that she will never see in person. The reader can see the beauty of the contessa's lake and and smell her lush gardens, hear the sad music of the cello and the joyful song of her caged bird, feel the heat of the candle wax and the thick velvet of her robe. The romance is satisfying without going over the top. I did, however, feel a bit sorry for the contessa's husband, whose worst crime seemed to be that he wasn't the other man; although he made a few thoughtless statements, he did seem to be trying to do the right thing. If I could change one thing about this book, it would be the title, which probably won't catch the attention of readers who would potentially enjoy the novel. "The Blind Contessa" suggests an older woman, not a vibrant young bride; and "the new machine" plays only a secondary (yet important) role and doesn't appear until the last third of the book. (This is not really the story of the invention of the typewriter, as the cover blurb suggests!)
    • 4/5
      I had no idea that the type writer was invented for a blind woman by a man who loved her till I found this novel. This is a very simple, short read. Carolina realizes she is going blind just before she marries Pietro. Both her parents and Pietro just shrug off her concerns, but the inevitable happens and Carolina's world finally goes completely dark. Turri, her childhood friend and neighbor fancies himself an inventor. He is also very much in love with Carolina and after she has a disastrous attempt with ink, he invents the type writer for her. (Note, it wasn't called a type writer yet..) Meanwhile, Carolina and Turri begin an affair. The big problem is they are both married to other people. What can become of this? There is also a mystery involving mysterious footsteps Carolina keeps hearing. Upon inquiring as to who is there tho, no one responds. I was about to give this three stars because there is one MAJOR killer about this book. The narrative does not SHOW the reader what's going, but TELLS the entire tale. The reader can never feel as tho they are there or involved in the story. As a result of its biography type feel, the story never comes alive. I was also irritated by the character Liza and her "reading lies." I found that just plain weird. The ending took me by surprise tho (which is hard to do) so four stars.
    • 3/5
      Sweet and melancholy.