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Binding: Audio Cassette
EAN: 9781402556005
ISBN: 064170982X
Label: Recorded Books
Manufacturer: Recorded Books
Number Of Items: 6
Publication Date: 2003-10
Publisher: Recorded Books
Sales Rank: 2750328
Studio: Recorded Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Following the triumph of his Booker Prize–winning True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey ventures into the Far East with a novel shot through with mysteries at once historical, literary, and personal.
Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a London poetry magazine, had grown up knowing the famous and infamous John Slater. And because he figured prominently in the disaster that was her parents’ marriage, when Slater proposes that she accompany him to Malaysia, Sarah embarks out of curiosity on a journey that becomes, instead, a lifelong obsession. Her discoveries spiral outward from Christopher Chubb, a destitute Australian she meets by chance in the steamy, fetid city of Kuala Lumpur. He is mad, Slater warns her, explaining the ruinous hoax Chubb had committed decades earlier. But lurking behind the man’s peculiarity and arrogance, Sarah senses, is artistic genius, in the form of a manuscript he teases her with and which she soon would do anything to acquire. The provenance of this work, she gradually learns, is marked by kidnapping, exile, and death—a relentless saga that reaches from Melbourne to Bali, Sumatra, and Java, and that more than once compels her back to Malaysia without ever disclosing all of its secrets, only the power of the imagination and the price it can exact from those who would wield it.
Astonishing, mesmerizing, and ultimately shocking, My Life as a Fake is the most audacious novel yet in Peter Carey’s extraordinary career.
Amazon.com Review:
Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake is a literate mystery of forgeries and doppelgangers with a fictional manuscript at its heart. The mystery--the origin of a brilliant but purportedly faked poem--fuels a whirlwind pursuit through Australia and across the wilds of Malaysia. Grappling with her own childhood demons, Carey's bibliophile sleuth, Sarah Wode-Douglass, sometimes becomes lost in the exotic and bloody chase.
The novel opens as Sarah, the reluctant tourist and editor of The Modern Review, is dragged by a foppish poet-friend, John Slater, to Kuala Lumpur. Sarah is intent on biding her time in her hotel, but a chance encounter with a scabrous reader of Rilke soon transforms Sarah's plans and, ultimately, her life. The reader, the Australian poet Christopher Chubb, is the disgraced initiator of a great literary hoax--the faked poems of the non-existent Bob McCorkle. The McCorkle hoax was Chubb's attempt to bring down a rising poetry editor, David Weiss. When the hoax was exposed, Weiss was believed to have committed suicide. But, living in exile, Chubb has hidden a secret for decades: Bob McCorkle had seemingly materialized in human form, killing Weiss and destroying Chubb's life. Sarah is tantalized by a fragment of supposed McCorkle poetry that Chubb has shared with her. Whether it is a fake or the work of a madman, Sarah believes it is genius. Her obsession, however, drives her and Chubb to the precipice of self-destruction.
The primary story--Chubb's pursuit of McCorkle--lives in the fictional past, and the plot occasionally becomes muddled in the nest of narrators recalling conversations second or third hand. In playing out the McCorkle affair, Carey’s denouement comes too quickly. If Sarah is transformed, Carey doesn't reveal enough of her in the text. He is mesmerized, as is the reader, by Chubb's horrific tale.
With its small shortcomings, the novel offers a sophisticated interrogation of authorship and fakery and the power of art. Carey avoids simplifying the McCorkle mystery, leaving the reader to puzzle out McCorkle's bizarre incarnation. While My Life as a Fake is frequently entertaining, the atmospheric mystery occasionally glimpses the profound. --Patrick O'Kelley
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The Ern Malley poetry is some of the funniest, most vibrant work ever produced in Australia - and the story itself really defines Australia's contradictory, anxious attitude towards its own literature. It's excellent stuff - it was a shame that Carey's novel did such a poor job of conveying that. He took a lively story (told far better by Michael Heyward in 'The Ern Malley Affair' if you're interested) and suffocated it in a convoluted, rather boring novel. It is weighed down by constant, laboured ... Read More
Rating:  -
Time for "literature" with the capital L, folks. I think we all know that people will be reading his works hundreds of years after we're all dead. My original reading background is in the literary tradition. I don't often mention it in my newsletter because I'm trying to sell my books here, and most people have a bad case of knee jerk "Literary? Yuk!" There were no Australian authors in my school curriculum, though, so I'm discovering them now.
Peter Carey. He's written some books that I ... Read More
Rating:  -
Within a matter of three hours, I had read a review of the book, bought it, and devoured it.... There really is no other way about it. Right from the start, the book is full of intrigue and suspense. Nor does it disappoint. Each character has its own complex psychological make-up; all of them interacting with one another, trying to guess the other's game. Enter the ghoulish character who is the biggest mysetery of them all. His writings, others' confessions, and the bizarre ending leave one in a ... Read More
Rating: -
In the beginning Peter writes beautifully, weaving a magical wonderland with his delightfully erudite sentences. He draws you in, setting a scene of interest and intrigue, but about halfway through just when you expect things to begin happening, it all slows down into a big pile of boring sludge where his stylistic concerns seem to be of greater interest than the story itself.
After my initial excitement I was most disappointed by this, and one fine Wednesday morning I hurled the book across ... Read More
Rating: -
I have been a fan of Peter Carey since reading Oscar and Lucinda ten years ago, and have enjoyed every story since (Jack Maggs was a gripper!), but this one was work to get through. The only reason I trudged through the book was because I had faith that Mr. Carey would deliver. At some points, I thought he was close...I was interested, and ready to be excited. But then, once again, something irritating happened (chubb was caught; he meets someone whose past MUST be explained in detail; the editor's own family ... Read More
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