Peter Carey, His Illegal Self
Carey, Peter. His Illegal Self. New York: Knopf, 2008.
On the long list of things that Mr. Carey does damn well, I would give top place to children. Those who fear that the child POV was exhausted with high modernism and is now verboten and twee will be glad to meet Che, or Jay, who is rendered with fidelity in his moments of perception and emotion and transgression, who is used neither sentimentally as a miniature adult nor sadistically as a punching bag for the world's arbitrary cruelty. Both cruelty and love in this book come as surprises, reversing themselves without warning - Carey has the genuine storyteller's confidence, with no fear of the leaping metaphor or the unexpected lurch in time and perspective. Damn if he doesn't know how to deploy them. This doesn't enter the marketplace for another month or so (a friend in high places scored me a review copy), but watch the skies.
On the long list of things that Mr. Carey does damn well, I would give top place to children. Those who fear that the child POV was exhausted with high modernism and is now verboten and twee will be glad to meet Che, or Jay, who is rendered with fidelity in his moments of perception and emotion and transgression, who is used neither sentimentally as a miniature adult nor sadistically as a punching bag for the world's arbitrary cruelty. Both cruelty and love in this book come as surprises, reversing themselves without warning - Carey has the genuine storyteller's confidence, with no fear of the leaping metaphor or the unexpected lurch in time and perspective. Damn if he doesn't know how to deploy them. This doesn't enter the marketplace for another month or so (a friend in high places scored me a review copy), but watch the skies.
