Peter Carey is of course one of Australia’s greatest novelists, being one of only three
writers to have won the Man Booker Prize twice, JM Coetzee and Hilary Mantell
being the other two. He won it in 1988 for Oscar & Lucinda and again in
2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang and was also shortlisted in 2010
for Parrot & Olivier in America. He has also won the Miles Franklin Award,
Australia’s top literary prize three times. And the Commonwealth Writers Prize
twice, all significant achievements indeed.
It will not
surprise me if Amnesia, his 13th novel, is short-listed for the Man
Booker & other awards in the coming year. It is powerful stuff, funny and
dark, fast-moving, terrific characterisation, Peter Carey at his very best I
reckon.
It is his
first novel set in Australia since True History of the Kelly Gang and
it is set largely in the years since November 1975 when Gabrielle Baillieux is
born in a Melbourne hospital on the day that the Governor General announces on
the radio that he has dissolved Australia’s legally elected government led by
Gough Whitlam. This event proves to play a major part in the book.
Gaby as she
is called becomes one of several principal characters. Her story is being told
by another principal figure, Felix Moore, “Australia’s last serving left-wing
journalist” who has just been sued for defamation and ordered to pulp his
latest book. He is a flawed and unreliable character but still with heaps of
energy and an ability to write at a furious pace.
Gaby is
raised by her actor mum, Celine, and her Labour party politician dad, Sandy.
When she gets into major trouble with the authorities over computer hacking as
a young adult, her mother, Celine, approaches Felix Moore, they were friends
back in the 1970’s, to get him to tell to tell her back story and thus prove
her innocence. The first half the book is written in the first person voice of Felix.
Woody Townes
a wealthy property developer comes on the scene and he bails Gaby from jail and
arranges for Felix to get exclusive access to her story and thus clear her
name. Woody it transpires is also an old friend of Celine, thus his generosity.
As Felix gets into his research we learn about Gaby’s grandmother and mother
and about other significant episodes in Australia’s political history.
In the
second half of the book Felix is replaced as narrator by a variety of voices
that appear on interview tapes that Felix has been given to form the basis of
the book he is writing about Gaby’s life.
I can’t say
too much more about the book without spoiling it but I should explain that Gaby
has a hatred of corruption and her misdemeanour is the releasing of a virus
into the computers of Australia’s prison system which results in hundreds of
prisoners, particularly asylum seekers walking free. And because an American
corporation runs the Australian prison software security system American
prisons are also affected by the virus and thus the CIA are seeking Gaby’s
extradition to the US. It is a case of the cyber underworld colliding with international power politics.
The story is
set largely in Melbourne and north of Sydney.
The book
will delight Peter Carey’s numerous fans and I am picking it to be a worldwide
best-seller over the next couple of months.
Although
Australian he has lived in New York for the past 25 years and was home
in Australia promoting his new book just last week. His wife is the British
publisher Frances Coady to whom I notice he has dedicated this latest book. Coady was the founding publisher of Vintage paperbacks and
Random House’s literary division in the UK. She also relaunched Granta Books
and established Picador USA as a major literary trade paperback house.
Amnesia - Hamish Hamilton, NZ$40.00
Amnesia - Hamish Hamilton, NZ$40.00
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