It was an entertaining evening - albeit very, very cold (even with the heating on, the church was akin to sitting in a giant refrigerator and after an hour in the pews I could barely feel my feet because they’d turned numb with the cold).
It was essentially the Irish launch of his latest novel, A Long Way from Home, which has since been longlisted for the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award. I feel like a good editor/publisher could have read this and sent Carey away for a re-write that would have made a much better novel, but they undoubtedly don't do that with authors of his stature.Fiction – paperback Faber & Faber 336 pages 2018.Įarlier this year, in the depths of winter, I went to Dublin for a long weekend, specifically to see Peter Carey in conversation with Joseph O’Connor at the “Pepper Canister Church” on Upper Mount Street. Can't tell you how many times I looked at my iPhone and said "ugh, that much more to go?" I think Carey tried to create a climax with the sub plot that really is the raison d'être of the book and it occupies the latter 1/3 of the narrative, but I was pretty bored and pretty confused by some of the characters and how they got into this novel and the interactions with the protagonist just did not feel authentic.No spoiler alerts to be given away, but the supposed climax of the novel is just boring and not "organic" to what has occurred in the rest of the book. The teaser sounds good! But honestly, I listened with a sense of "can we please get this book over with," and/or "there has got to be a big climax to make it all worthwhile," and that did not happen for me. Peter Carey, noted Booker Prize author, returns to Australia and explores adventure (Redex race) and shameful past (treatment of aboriginals).
It seems that reviewers of this book WANT to like it more than its true worth. A Long Way from Home is Peter Carey's late-style masterpiece. Set in the 1950s, this a world every American will recognize: black, white, who we are, how we got here, and what we did to each other along the way. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always compelling, even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.
This is a thrilling high-speed story that starts in one way and then takes you someplace else.
With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher who calls the turns and creeks crossings on a map that will remove them, without warning, from the white Australia they all know so well. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. The two-time Booker Prize-winning author now gives us a wildly exuberant, wily new novel that circumnavigates 1954 Australia, revealing as much about the country/continent as it does about three audacious individuals who take part in the infamous 10,000 mile race the Redex Trial.
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