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His Illegal Self
Raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, Che, the precocious son of 60s radicals, just wants to see his parents. But first he must become an outlaw himself, fleeing to a hippy commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland, where he is forced to slowly, bravely, confront his life. "His Illegal Self" is an achingly beautiful and emotional story of the love between a young woman and a little boy, and a wonderful journey of self-discovery.
272 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2008
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1422 people want to read
About the author
Peter Carey
102 books1,031 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Not all books on this profile are by the same author. See this thread for more information.
Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.
He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived.
In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. He was nineteen.
For the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney.
After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. This slim book made him an overnight success.
From 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. Thus between 1976 and 1990, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda won it. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector.
In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. He taught at NYU one night a week. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize.
He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders.
In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize).
Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.
He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived.
In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. He was nineteen.
For the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney.
After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. This slim book made him an overnight success.
From 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. Thus between 1976 and 1990, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda won it. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector.
In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. He taught at NYU one night a week. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize.
He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders.
In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 394 reviews
October 1, 2022
During the heights (or would that be lows) of counter culture in the 1960s Che was left py his radical, yet Harvard educated parents to be brought up by his grandmother, until one day his mother swoops him and takes his 7 year old self with her; his happiness in being back with his parent slowly begins to falter the longer he begins to realise that they are on the run, and also, this woman who took him, might not even be his mother!
A book that uses the counter culture of the 60s as a backdrop for this not too overtly literary, look at loss of innocence, friendship, privilege, expectations and idealised wants and more. On the face of it I would think that this book is right up my street, but ultimately I just didn't care, even though the lead character was 7 years old! A writer has to make a reader care, right? 4 out of 12
2022 read
A book that uses the counter culture of the 60s as a backdrop for this not too overtly literary, look at loss of innocence, friendship, privilege, expectations and idealised wants and more. On the face of it I would think that this book is right up my street, but ultimately I just didn't care, even though the lead character was 7 years old! A writer has to make a reader care, right? 4 out of 12
2022 read
June 8, 2017
Another mis-matched audio read. I picked this up not knowing what else to choose. I have made a list since, of books on my tbr, so I will not make a mistake like this again. I do look forward to the 20 or so books I have noted down for myself. Literary fiction is not my choice, but I have wanted to try this Aussie author for some time as I own a couple of his. Amnesia is the only one that comes to mind, although I am certain there are more.
As I was not engaged with this one, I ended up missing key plot points on my daily work commute. I am getting extra audio reading in as I am putting my hand up for extra sport taxiing for the kids. I seem to only be able to get moments of solitude this way. This in itself is worrying. (I am reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking).
I won’t bother with mentioning the plot, but will mention the narrator mispronounced proper nouns in this reading. I didn’t write anything down as it is a car read, but one I did remember for the Aussie readers of this review is Caloundra. The narrator said ‘Collundra’. Errors such as this should not be missed by the production team, although the narrator was a New Zealander. The imagery of the Australian bush, mainly Queensland was nice.
The funny thing is one of the discs was damaged, and I ended up borrowing the physical book from my work, not even catching up on the missed portion I was that nonplussed. Funny to note the author did not use quotation marks.
This was in no way, for me, a joyous story.
As I was not engaged with this one, I ended up missing key plot points on my daily work commute. I am getting extra audio reading in as I am putting my hand up for extra sport taxiing for the kids. I seem to only be able to get moments of solitude this way. This in itself is worrying. (I am reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking).
I won’t bother with mentioning the plot, but will mention the narrator mispronounced proper nouns in this reading. I didn’t write anything down as it is a car read, but one I did remember for the Aussie readers of this review is Caloundra. The narrator said ‘Collundra’. Errors such as this should not be missed by the production team, although the narrator was a New Zealander. The imagery of the Australian bush, mainly Queensland was nice.
The funny thing is one of the discs was damaged, and I ended up borrowing the physical book from my work, not even catching up on the missed portion I was that nonplussed. Funny to note the author did not use quotation marks.
This was in no way, for me, a joyous story.
January 17, 2008
Che Selkirk is a boy whose parents, members of the increasingly violent Students for a Democratic Society, have both disappeared, leaving him with his very rich grandmother. At the age of eight, a woman that Che recognises as his mother suddenly arrives and kidnaps him, taking him from New York to Australia. This is how the book begins, and Che’s adventure through hunger, love and loss becomes almost a coming of age tale as he starts to understand who he is and where his future lies.
On the simplest of levels, the book is a super fast-paced race across the globe as Che and Dial attempt to hide from the police and carve an existence for themselves. The plot is propelled by both the readers own dislocation as they come to grips with the distortions between the two narrative voices. Both Che and Dial are presented as equals – joint narrators in this story, but their stories aren’t identical. The reader is put in the uncomfortable position of being between them, unable to discount either the intensity of Che’s needs, or the combination of confusion and desire which motivates Dial. Both need one another, and continue to work together at avoiding the truth and avoiding the law, at the same time they find themselves removed from their usual lives, and co-opted for causes they don’t believe in.
As in so many of Carey’s novels, real love and visual artifice become the two forces that move the narrative along. It’s a search for a truth that isn’t nearly as obvious as one might think. It’s about the way love crisscrosses us – marks us, makes us whole, and hurts us at the same time.
Carey handles it all very subtly, weaving privilege, pain and damage together into a beautiful tapestry. Nothing seems stable, and yet there’s something solid growing – that “sharp searing pain that didn’t hurt” – something real, absolutely true, and physical that stays with us through life’s changes.
There are no fireworks in this book – the prose is light and smooth, but looking closely, each sentence is wrought with meaning and intensity. Che is “gooseflesh, head to toes” as he realizes how helpless he is. When dial hears a girl calling for the lost Che, she recognizes this “dreadful sympathy.” The hippy landscape of Nambour, from the home grown vegetables to the scruffy undergrowth is almost lovingly depicted.
Like even the blackest of Carey’s novels (and for me, it’s tempting to almost see this novel as the antidote to The Tax Inspector), there’s a strong undercurrent of humour. Dial is subsumed in the small-mindedness of Australia, and yet she holds onto desperately to her status: “Her mother would have died to see her genius in a dump like this.” (36) She was an “SDS goddess”, the Alice May Twitchell Fellow – an assistant professor at Vassar College, stuck in the backwoods of Australia where, as with any commune, the pettiness is all pervasive. She puts up shelving for lentils, lines the house with crooked boards, and tries to procure the services of a Zoot-suited lawyer to argue her case back in America so Che can go home, but her ignorance is obvious enough to the hippies whose commune she joins.
Trevor tells her at one point “You’re American. You wouldn’t know if you were up yourself” (70). She begins to know whether she’s “up herself” as the book progresses however. Dial’s painful learning curve is part of what makes this novel work.
In an act of remarkable self-control, Carey leaves the story open, suggesting a long and complex history which the reader isn’t privy to. This last sentence so changes the story that this reader at least went back and re-read it in its entirety, taking in the rich linguistic power which Carey has become famous for. Che is believable, both as the 8 year old boy struggling to find himself, and as the older, wiser narrator he becomes by the end of the book. One can imagine many other landscapes, or books growing out of this boy. But for now, there’s only the reader’s imagination, which Carey has kickstarted with this moving novel.
On the simplest of levels, the book is a super fast-paced race across the globe as Che and Dial attempt to hide from the police and carve an existence for themselves. The plot is propelled by both the readers own dislocation as they come to grips with the distortions between the two narrative voices. Both Che and Dial are presented as equals – joint narrators in this story, but their stories aren’t identical. The reader is put in the uncomfortable position of being between them, unable to discount either the intensity of Che’s needs, or the combination of confusion and desire which motivates Dial. Both need one another, and continue to work together at avoiding the truth and avoiding the law, at the same time they find themselves removed from their usual lives, and co-opted for causes they don’t believe in.
As in so many of Carey’s novels, real love and visual artifice become the two forces that move the narrative along. It’s a search for a truth that isn’t nearly as obvious as one might think. It’s about the way love crisscrosses us – marks us, makes us whole, and hurts us at the same time.
Carey handles it all very subtly, weaving privilege, pain and damage together into a beautiful tapestry. Nothing seems stable, and yet there’s something solid growing – that “sharp searing pain that didn’t hurt” – something real, absolutely true, and physical that stays with us through life’s changes.
There are no fireworks in this book – the prose is light and smooth, but looking closely, each sentence is wrought with meaning and intensity. Che is “gooseflesh, head to toes” as he realizes how helpless he is. When dial hears a girl calling for the lost Che, she recognizes this “dreadful sympathy.” The hippy landscape of Nambour, from the home grown vegetables to the scruffy undergrowth is almost lovingly depicted.
Like even the blackest of Carey’s novels (and for me, it’s tempting to almost see this novel as the antidote to The Tax Inspector), there’s a strong undercurrent of humour. Dial is subsumed in the small-mindedness of Australia, and yet she holds onto desperately to her status: “Her mother would have died to see her genius in a dump like this.” (36) She was an “SDS goddess”, the Alice May Twitchell Fellow – an assistant professor at Vassar College, stuck in the backwoods of Australia where, as with any commune, the pettiness is all pervasive. She puts up shelving for lentils, lines the house with crooked boards, and tries to procure the services of a Zoot-suited lawyer to argue her case back in America so Che can go home, but her ignorance is obvious enough to the hippies whose commune she joins.
Trevor tells her at one point “You’re American. You wouldn’t know if you were up yourself” (70). She begins to know whether she’s “up herself” as the book progresses however. Dial’s painful learning curve is part of what makes this novel work.
In an act of remarkable self-control, Carey leaves the story open, suggesting a long and complex history which the reader isn’t privy to. This last sentence so changes the story that this reader at least went back and re-read it in its entirety, taking in the rich linguistic power which Carey has become famous for. Che is believable, both as the 8 year old boy struggling to find himself, and as the older, wiser narrator he becomes by the end of the book. One can imagine many other landscapes, or books growing out of this boy. But for now, there’s only the reader’s imagination, which Carey has kickstarted with this moving novel.
March 2, 2008
Worthy of another Booker prize?
No.
Fascinating with some literary merit?
Yes.
Carey tells this tale mainly from two characters' perspectives: a boy/son/grandson, Che or Jay, and a mother/kidnapper/revolutionary, Dial or Anna. Confused? Try reading the novel. The prose isn't necessarily dense, but it often demands rereading phrases or sentences in order to interpret what, exactly, is happening in the novel. Carey never uses quotation marks, which, surprisingly, isn't the cause of the confusion. He, instead, layers metaphors or deliberately "gums up" a sentence in order to obtain what I imagine he feels is a sense of art or what he believes embellishes his plot. What is the plot? In the Vietnam Era, an eight-year-old boy being raised by his very rich grandmother (lives on Park Avenue) is delivered to and/or kidnapped by a friend of the boy's mother/a former employee of the grandmother's so that the boy may visit with his felonious, underground, biological mother. The boy never actually reaches his intended destination, however, and spends most of the book in a socialist commune in Australia. What happens beyond those facts is rather trivial and incidental.
Throughout my reading of the book, I kept waiting for the ah-ha moment when I would realize why this author was twice awarded the Booker prize; it never came. I appreciated some of his sentences and the way that he handled a few pacing details (ie. "years from now he would remember . . ." or "when he was a baby he used to . . ." you get the point). Initially, I enjoyed being confused and felt that the sentence structure added to the suspense of the novel; however, two-hundred pages into the book, it felt like Carey was only filling-in empty spaces between the action sequences of the plot and trying to meet some page quota, which was very annoying. [I suspect his editor no longer line-edits his too-famous manuscripts.] I don't mean to be disrespectful, but Peter Carey, you should have a discussion with Joan Didion about her most recent work; you both have a lot in common. Next time, please have a little more consideration for the integrity of your work and don't fall back on your previous success. Your readers will be oh-so-grateful.
No.
Fascinating with some literary merit?
Yes.
Carey tells this tale mainly from two characters' perspectives: a boy/son/grandson, Che or Jay, and a mother/kidnapper/revolutionary, Dial or Anna. Confused? Try reading the novel. The prose isn't necessarily dense, but it often demands rereading phrases or sentences in order to interpret what, exactly, is happening in the novel. Carey never uses quotation marks, which, surprisingly, isn't the cause of the confusion. He, instead, layers metaphors or deliberately "gums up" a sentence in order to obtain what I imagine he feels is a sense of art or what he believes embellishes his plot. What is the plot? In the Vietnam Era, an eight-year-old boy being raised by his very rich grandmother (lives on Park Avenue) is delivered to and/or kidnapped by a friend of the boy's mother/a former employee of the grandmother's so that the boy may visit with his felonious, underground, biological mother. The boy never actually reaches his intended destination, however, and spends most of the book in a socialist commune in Australia. What happens beyond those facts is rather trivial and incidental.
Throughout my reading of the book, I kept waiting for the ah-ha moment when I would realize why this author was twice awarded the Booker prize; it never came. I appreciated some of his sentences and the way that he handled a few pacing details (ie. "years from now he would remember . . ." or "when he was a baby he used to . . ." you get the point). Initially, I enjoyed being confused and felt that the sentence structure added to the suspense of the novel; however, two-hundred pages into the book, it felt like Carey was only filling-in empty spaces between the action sequences of the plot and trying to meet some page quota, which was very annoying. [I suspect his editor no longer line-edits his too-famous manuscripts.] I don't mean to be disrespectful, but Peter Carey, you should have a discussion with Joan Didion about her most recent work; you both have a lot in common. Next time, please have a little more consideration for the integrity of your work and don't fall back on your previous success. Your readers will be oh-so-grateful.
August 3, 2011
Peter Carey is one of the few authors whose works I've read in their entirety. I've enjoyed some very much and others were blown away by. I think he should get at least as much attention and fame as Ian McEwan. However, "His Illegal Self" is a misstep. The novel reads like a draft--something quick and dirty that Carey had to get out to the publisher in order to fulfill a contract having already spent the advance.
There's nothing to hold on to in this book--if character makes plot then there's no story as not a single character as drawn has a ring of truth to them especially Anna whose actions and expressed or imagined motivations are never clear. Take him away, keep him, send him home, no wait, don't let's pick him up in a scene like Thelma and Louise run in reverse. Just weird.
The other protagonist, Che, was sometimes precocious and sometimes a big baby. Teaching Trevor to swim, Carey writes, "No matter how sad you were, swimming always cleaned your soul. The boy said those words exactly." No, no it he didn't say any such thing. Why? Because the boy never said one profound thing out loud in the entire book let alone make a reference to something so abstract as a soul or so esoteric as a metaphor, so why start at age 8 on page 248? Other times he just wants to be stroked and petted like a cat or a baby and when the story is in his point of view the narrative takes on the choppy disconnected thoughts of a highly distracted child.
Except for Trevor who is a criminal with an ax to grind (what else is new) I have no idea why anyone did anything in this book and the abrupt shifts in point of view didn't help me get there either. The style may be innovative but to me it's sloppy.
There's nothing to hold on to in this book--if character makes plot then there's no story as not a single character as drawn has a ring of truth to them especially Anna whose actions and expressed or imagined motivations are never clear. Take him away, keep him, send him home, no wait, don't let's pick him up in a scene like Thelma and Louise run in reverse. Just weird.
The other protagonist, Che, was sometimes precocious and sometimes a big baby. Teaching Trevor to swim, Carey writes, "No matter how sad you were, swimming always cleaned your soul. The boy said those words exactly." No, no it he didn't say any such thing. Why? Because the boy never said one profound thing out loud in the entire book let alone make a reference to something so abstract as a soul or so esoteric as a metaphor, so why start at age 8 on page 248? Other times he just wants to be stroked and petted like a cat or a baby and when the story is in his point of view the narrative takes on the choppy disconnected thoughts of a highly distracted child.
Except for Trevor who is a criminal with an ax to grind (what else is new) I have no idea why anyone did anything in this book and the abrupt shifts in point of view didn't help me get there either. The style may be innovative but to me it's sloppy.
October 17, 2013
I was captivated in many ways with this unusual story, often moved in surprising breakthroughs, but for the most part unfulfilled by the mash-up of perspectives and non-linear narrative.
We have a precocious and lonely seven year-old boy, Che, being raised by a wealthy grandmother in New York, who through a confusing series of events, ends up hiding out in a semi-jungle region of northern Queensland, Australia, with his former babysitter/housekeeper, Dial. He’s a real trooper, very resilient. He yearns to connect with his real parents, who are SDS radicals in hiding from the FBI, but comes to love Dial as a substitute. She listens to him and reads to him. They try to make a go of gardening in a little community off the grid composed of outlaws in hiding and hippies. The place is strange and alien, but wonderful in many ways for a boy raised in a city. He begins to bond with a renegade neighbor who begins to teach him survival skills.
That’s the main core of the story. There is little issue of spoilers with this general synopsis. The art of the novel is in its presentation. The timeline moves back and forth and sideways on the path between New York and Australia. Half the time we are with the boy’s perspective, mostly in the present, some in memory, and occasionally from some point years later. The other half of the time we are in Dial’s perspective. Often we are frustrated with the poor choices she makes that lead her to the status of kidnapper. But we admire her for her combination of selfish and selfless love for Che. And in many ways she is the only voice of sanity among all the characters. There is nothing romantic about the radicals, hippies, and outlaws that populate the story, but lots of self-centered blundering.
Maybe the key to digesting this tale lies with parsing the meanings of the transplantation of the broken bits America in the early 70’s in the form of two true humans to the never-never land of remote Australia. It does put the realistic love between Che and Dial on some kind of platform, with echoes of a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, McCarthy’s “The Road” in particular. But I didn’t rate that book very highly either. In another way, the book reminds me of the collision of hippie and survivalist cultures in T.C. Boyle’s “Drop City,” which by contrast I like better because its more comprehensible social commentary and relief in satirical humor.
So far I’ve loved Carey’s “Parrot and Olivier in America” and was less satisfied with “Jack Maggs”, both historical fiction set in the 19th century. Maybe I should stick with his more admired historical fiction in my next outing: “Oscar and Lucinda” and “The True History of the Kelly Gang.”
We have a precocious and lonely seven year-old boy, Che, being raised by a wealthy grandmother in New York, who through a confusing series of events, ends up hiding out in a semi-jungle region of northern Queensland, Australia, with his former babysitter/housekeeper, Dial. He’s a real trooper, very resilient. He yearns to connect with his real parents, who are SDS radicals in hiding from the FBI, but comes to love Dial as a substitute. She listens to him and reads to him. They try to make a go of gardening in a little community off the grid composed of outlaws in hiding and hippies. The place is strange and alien, but wonderful in many ways for a boy raised in a city. He begins to bond with a renegade neighbor who begins to teach him survival skills.
That’s the main core of the story. There is little issue of spoilers with this general synopsis. The art of the novel is in its presentation. The timeline moves back and forth and sideways on the path between New York and Australia. Half the time we are with the boy’s perspective, mostly in the present, some in memory, and occasionally from some point years later. The other half of the time we are in Dial’s perspective. Often we are frustrated with the poor choices she makes that lead her to the status of kidnapper. But we admire her for her combination of selfish and selfless love for Che. And in many ways she is the only voice of sanity among all the characters. There is nothing romantic about the radicals, hippies, and outlaws that populate the story, but lots of self-centered blundering.
Maybe the key to digesting this tale lies with parsing the meanings of the transplantation of the broken bits America in the early 70’s in the form of two true humans to the never-never land of remote Australia. It does put the realistic love between Che and Dial on some kind of platform, with echoes of a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, McCarthy’s “The Road” in particular. But I didn’t rate that book very highly either. In another way, the book reminds me of the collision of hippie and survivalist cultures in T.C. Boyle’s “Drop City,” which by contrast I like better because its more comprehensible social commentary and relief in satirical humor.
So far I’ve loved Carey’s “Parrot and Olivier in America” and was less satisfied with “Jack Maggs”, both historical fiction set in the 19th century. Maybe I should stick with his more admired historical fiction in my next outing: “Oscar and Lucinda” and “The True History of the Kelly Gang.”
September 12, 2008
I don't often get to the point when I decide I can't read anymore but I did with His Illegal Self. I had been looking at this book for a long time and finally picked it up to read. What I found was extremely confusing. Who is the boy? Who is his mother? Is his father really the Che? How is the grandmother involved? Is his mother really his mother or someone else and what or who is she hiding from? Then the mother sacrifices herself but did she really? The story jumps around locations and time periods, the characters are like Mexican jumping beans and I just couldn't figure it all out. I tried- I really did- and I still feel that if I could have stuck with it it would have come together in the end, but I just couldn't do it- can you tell I feel a little guilty about not finishing the book? Sorry- but there is so much out there that I want to read that I had to give up on His Illegal Self.
April 27, 2018
Audiobook. I struggled with listening to this audiobook at times but made it to the end.
April 15, 2012
loving this book
written with such emotion i want to reach and hug or smack the characters far too frequently
********
i really enjoyed this book. it was so easy to connect with the characters in this book - like or hate them
the story is about a woman who steals a child in America, kind of by accident and then lands up on the run with him, in Australia.
the book very beautifully shows the relationship between this woman and the boy, as well as the relationships they both have with the odd hippies they land up living with. Che, the boy, is a heart string tugging character. He is just an enticing little boy i wanted to hug him and weep for him, and then cheer for his achievements and strengths. He is a very real little boy dealing with life in that serious way so many kids have when facing adversity.
Dial, the kidnapper, is a character i took a bit longer to connect with. I got frustrated at the start by her dumb decisions, but as she did too, so i realised her mistakes were what made her human, and able to love Che.
stockholm syndrome or real love? - the relationship they develop maybe either. but what it is is what both characters need.
i read reviews about this book after i had finished it and there are all sorts of links to Huckleberry Finn and Call of the Wild. I know neither of those books well enough to be able to comment on this. and honestly, i don't think not drawing the parallels made my enjoyment of the book any less.
I am off to read more of the Carey's i have in my bookshelf
written with such emotion i want to reach and hug or smack the characters far too frequently
********
i really enjoyed this book. it was so easy to connect with the characters in this book - like or hate them
the story is about a woman who steals a child in America, kind of by accident and then lands up on the run with him, in Australia.
the book very beautifully shows the relationship between this woman and the boy, as well as the relationships they both have with the odd hippies they land up living with. Che, the boy, is a heart string tugging character. He is just an enticing little boy i wanted to hug him and weep for him, and then cheer for his achievements and strengths. He is a very real little boy dealing with life in that serious way so many kids have when facing adversity.
Dial, the kidnapper, is a character i took a bit longer to connect with. I got frustrated at the start by her dumb decisions, but as she did too, so i realised her mistakes were what made her human, and able to love Che.
stockholm syndrome or real love? - the relationship they develop maybe either. but what it is is what both characters need.
i read reviews about this book after i had finished it and there are all sorts of links to Huckleberry Finn and Call of the Wild. I know neither of those books well enough to be able to comment on this. and honestly, i don't think not drawing the parallels made my enjoyment of the book any less.
I am off to read more of the Carey's i have in my bookshelf
June 29, 2014
This is not one of Peter Carey's better efforts. It seems to be one of those books that delights in making it as difficult as possible for the reader to follow the story. First, we have no punctuation marks on the conversations. OK, I can put up with that if I must. Then we have the chapters being told from different viewpoints (the child or “the mother” – who appears not to be the mother) without making that clear. OK, so I can get used to that as well, once I realize what’s going on. But add to that the time-slicing narrative whereby the story is sometimes in New York, then in Philadelphia, then in nowheresville Australia, looking back at many other places in the USA, and I am now totally lost. And somehow “the mother” gets money, and sews it in her skirt; when did that happen? Sorry, this is too much work for enjoyment. The one good thing I liked about the book was that when the story is being told from the boy's viewpoint, it us much more believable that some other books I have read ("The Goldfinch" comes to mind) in that the feelings and observations seem to be those of a nine-year-old, not of a twenty-nine-year old. So the boy enjoys riding the No 6 train and seeing Grand Central Station for the first time, for example. But I still found the lack of punctuation exasperating, and the ending was a non-ending, which also annoyed me.
March 6, 2008
I am a huge Peter Carey fan - huge. I can't tell you how disappointed I was in this book. I couldn't see the character, I couldn't find the voice, I didn't see the connections, and don't get me to talk about the ending, how predictable. I'm sorry, Peter, but I don't want you to use bits of your old books either!
I will give an extra star to the place they end up living and the grandmother. Both of these are well described and alive, for me.
I will give an extra star to the place they end up living and the grandmother. Both of these are well described and alive, for me.
June 8, 2009
I had the exact opposite problem with this book that I did with the last book I read. The problem with this book is that the story is good. It's interesting, if a bit cliche, but it takes some turns that intrigued. The problem is the writer is not a terribly good writer.
I know it's in vogue not to use quotation marks, but if you're virtually incapable of distinguishing between your characters' voices, it's probably necessary. It's not that the character's were unbelievable, but they seemed to all think in the exact same way, and use the exact same words and logical processes, regardless of age, gender, life experience, etc. And the problem is, ages and genders and experiences presented HUGE differences. This should have been made a bit more clear.
The story itself is interesting, and might have benefited from a bit more historical context, but in all shows promise that this particular writer can create an interesting world for his characters to inhabit. I just wish that the quality of writing were more enjoyable, that I actually wanted to spend time with the book, rather than feeling I had to suffer some mediocre prose to find out the ending to a story that genuinely had me hooked.
I know it's in vogue not to use quotation marks, but if you're virtually incapable of distinguishing between your characters' voices, it's probably necessary. It's not that the character's were unbelievable, but they seemed to all think in the exact same way, and use the exact same words and logical processes, regardless of age, gender, life experience, etc. And the problem is, ages and genders and experiences presented HUGE differences. This should have been made a bit more clear.
The story itself is interesting, and might have benefited from a bit more historical context, but in all shows promise that this particular writer can create an interesting world for his characters to inhabit. I just wish that the quality of writing were more enjoyable, that I actually wanted to spend time with the book, rather than feeling I had to suffer some mediocre prose to find out the ending to a story that genuinely had me hooked.
October 28, 2021
Peter Carey's usual mix of something a little bit mysterious and criminal, and something ironically funny, His Illegal Self is a great little comical romp involving an inadvertent kidnapping. Che (He insists on being called "Chay" whereas his grandparents call him "Jay") is snatched from his wealthy grapndparents' custody by a friend of his outlaw mother ostensibly for a short visit. When the mother unexpectantly dies, the friend, an Ivy League student from Australia named "Dial", panics and takes him back to Australia to live in a commune. It's the '70's and they refer to themselves as "hippies" even though the Australian outback is not exactly as angstful about Vietnam as America. Still, the "anything goes" atmosphere is an eye-opener for Che, mostly a negative one, though having never lived with a Father he does get some hard-as-nails advice from Dial's somewhat-boyfriend who manages to keep a sort of sanity at the commune, despite the efforts of the handful of other members who want to structure things (with rules such as "no cats"). A very darkly comical view of the world emerges and even after finishing, I still wonder about the darkness that Che will take with him into adulthood.
October 21, 2009
Carey is such a beastly writing god that I can almost ignore the fundamental implausibility of the impetus behind the central plot. This isn't a work of fantasy or even magical realism - it falls firmly into the modern realist camp, but in places it does have a woozy, dreamy feel, coupled with a storyline that doesn't quite make sense. Why, exactly, would Anna abandon her job? What happened to Susan? What's the deal with the dad? Why Australia? What the hell is going on with all of these nasty hippies?
Carey's writing has a bright, cutting hardness, one shared by many of my favorite Australian novelists (Tim Winton, Richard Flanagan, Murray Bail) that never devolves into gross sentimentality, but still presents characters with compassion and honesty.
Carey's writing has a bright, cutting hardness, one shared by many of my favorite Australian novelists (Tim Winton, Richard Flanagan, Murray Bail) that never devolves into gross sentimentality, but still presents characters with compassion and honesty.
March 10, 2008
I will not finish reading this book in protest of the CHEAP novelist's tactic of introducing a beloved pet only to kill it later for emotional effect. For once, can't we have a puppy or kitten that makes it through the whole story and is last seen curling comfortable in its bed at the end of the novel? I can only hope a stingray's barbed tail pierces your cold, cold, kitten-hating heart, Peter Carey, and that this book shows up on remainder shelves very soon.
June 18, 2013
confusing, implausible, curiously apolitical, utterly obsessed with loose breasts bouncing around within shirts as a motif of countercultural affiliation, and festooned with symbols of Emotional Moments while failing ever to make the characters emotionally believable. read Dana Spiotta's superior Eat the Document instead.
December 15, 2013
If you're a Peter Carey fan -- and you should be -- watch what you read about his compulsive new novel. Even the dust jacket risks spoiling the effect of this alternately gripping and disorienting story. The usual problem for reviewers is trying not to give away the end, but here the danger lies in giving away the beginning: His Illegal Self is front-loaded with shocks and twists that gradually fade into a contemplative tale of disrupted lives. Like two of his previous novels, "My Life as a Fake" (2003) and “Theft" (2006), this one is about acts of deception between characters -- and between Carey and his readers. But whereas those earlier novels boasted clever tricks, His Illegal Self develops the kind of emotional impact that renders it even more enriching and satisfying.
At the center of the story is a precocious 7-year-old boy named Che. The child of '60s radicals and the subject of one of the decade's most sensational news photos, he was placed in the custody of his Park Avenue grandmother at the age of 2 and raised in strict isolation in upstate New York. "She planned to bring him up Victorian," Carey writes. No television: no chance of seeing images of his infamous parents being escorted away by police. But the boy picks up stray details from a teenage neighbor who regales him with stories about the SDS, the Weathermen and his namesake, Che Guevara. He shows the boy a picture of his father from Life magazine. "You got a right to know," he tells him. "Your father is a great American. . . . They will come for you, man. They'll break you out of here."
The plot explodes off the first page with what was supposed to have been a moment of reconciliation. Che's grandmother has agreed to a one-hour visit with the boy's mother, the first in five years. But when Dial arrives to pick him up, she's tense and their reunion is fraught with complications. Che loves his grandmother, but of course no one could compete with the allure of an absent mother: "He had thought about her every day, forever," Carey writes. "She was burnished, angel sunlight."
Almost immediately, the adults' plans go horribly wrong; everyone's expectations are shattered and reordered by betrayal and fear. In a moment of panic, Dial finds herself on the lam again with the boy, the subject of an international search, dashing through seedy motels and safe houses with a wad of hundred-dollar bills -- then out of the country, underground in the land Down Under, where "the world was green, fecund, everything rotting and being born." It's a sudden, irrevocable destruction of the respectable life she had spent years constructing. The grandmother's threat rings in her ears: "If anything happens to him, I'll kill you." Only Che thrills to this new adventure, the fulfillment of a cherished dream: "His real life was just starting," he thinks. "He was going to see his dad."
The whole story bristles with political import -- the Vietnam War, the student uprisings, domestic terrorism -- but Carey keeps all that on the margins. He focuses instead on Dial's conflicted attitude toward motherhood and her faltering efforts to construct a home for this desperately trusting child, this "strange little thing," so serious and vulnerable. "If there was a way out of this, she did not see it," Carey writes, "and she once again regretted not leaving him in that hotel room. That might seem cruel to pet lovers and sentimentalists, but he would be with his grandma now, safe in bed on the other side of the world."
Although Carey has lived in New York since 1990, the two-time Booker Prize-winner was born and raised in Australia and spent time in his 30s at an alternative community in Queensland named Starlight. That experience may have informed his rather bitter portrayal of the loosely organized band of "feral hippies" in the East Coast town of Nambour, where Dial and Che settle. The young radicals here come off no better than they did in Drop City (2003), T.C. Boyle's novel about a commune. Dial considers them "time-warp idiots," self-righteous, naive and quick to construct new regulations to replace the ones they'd thrown off. The only person who takes a special interest in Dial and her boy is a paranoid, illiterate sanitation worker, who seems like a direct descendant of Mad Max. (He has the book of Revelation on cassette.) Dial wonders if she'll be murdered in her sleep or merely bored to death by another communal meeting in which "the conversation continued like water dribbling from a hose." Meanwhile, Che keeps wondering which one of these men is his father. The effect is oddly frightening and heartbreaking.
The genius of the novel is Carey's portrayal of this polite little boy, who carries around his "papers" and admonishes Dial not to yell, not to swear, not to tell lies. Even in the midst of her extremity, "he was as happy as he could ever remember, to have her to himself finally, at last, and the prospect of his father, that electric cloud of surprise hanging over him like vapor from an open bathroom door."
The story is not strictly told from Che's point of view -- Carey frequently backtracks and fills in bits of missing history -- but the narrative subtly reflects the boy's elliptical perception of what's happening. Events are scrambled and impressionistic, coming in and out of focus like a memory as Che vacillates between confusion and certainty, fear and delight. And this may be the first novel in which Carey allows himself to slow down. There are even some languid pages here and there as the months stretch out, but they're quickly interrupted by new waves of panic.
Carey's startling, kaleidoscopic plots are now so well known that we can't help overanticipating them, but he's still the master, still capable of staying two steps ahead of us. And in His Illegal Self the most surprising maneuver of all isn't so much a sudden revelation but his tender portrayal of the desperate love between this accidental mother and a little boy who she knows deserves better.
Originally published in The Washington Post
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
At the center of the story is a precocious 7-year-old boy named Che. The child of '60s radicals and the subject of one of the decade's most sensational news photos, he was placed in the custody of his Park Avenue grandmother at the age of 2 and raised in strict isolation in upstate New York. "She planned to bring him up Victorian," Carey writes. No television: no chance of seeing images of his infamous parents being escorted away by police. But the boy picks up stray details from a teenage neighbor who regales him with stories about the SDS, the Weathermen and his namesake, Che Guevara. He shows the boy a picture of his father from Life magazine. "You got a right to know," he tells him. "Your father is a great American. . . . They will come for you, man. They'll break you out of here."
The plot explodes off the first page with what was supposed to have been a moment of reconciliation. Che's grandmother has agreed to a one-hour visit with the boy's mother, the first in five years. But when Dial arrives to pick him up, she's tense and their reunion is fraught with complications. Che loves his grandmother, but of course no one could compete with the allure of an absent mother: "He had thought about her every day, forever," Carey writes. "She was burnished, angel sunlight."
Almost immediately, the adults' plans go horribly wrong; everyone's expectations are shattered and reordered by betrayal and fear. In a moment of panic, Dial finds herself on the lam again with the boy, the subject of an international search, dashing through seedy motels and safe houses with a wad of hundred-dollar bills -- then out of the country, underground in the land Down Under, where "the world was green, fecund, everything rotting and being born." It's a sudden, irrevocable destruction of the respectable life she had spent years constructing. The grandmother's threat rings in her ears: "If anything happens to him, I'll kill you." Only Che thrills to this new adventure, the fulfillment of a cherished dream: "His real life was just starting," he thinks. "He was going to see his dad."
The whole story bristles with political import -- the Vietnam War, the student uprisings, domestic terrorism -- but Carey keeps all that on the margins. He focuses instead on Dial's conflicted attitude toward motherhood and her faltering efforts to construct a home for this desperately trusting child, this "strange little thing," so serious and vulnerable. "If there was a way out of this, she did not see it," Carey writes, "and she once again regretted not leaving him in that hotel room. That might seem cruel to pet lovers and sentimentalists, but he would be with his grandma now, safe in bed on the other side of the world."
Although Carey has lived in New York since 1990, the two-time Booker Prize-winner was born and raised in Australia and spent time in his 30s at an alternative community in Queensland named Starlight. That experience may have informed his rather bitter portrayal of the loosely organized band of "feral hippies" in the East Coast town of Nambour, where Dial and Che settle. The young radicals here come off no better than they did in Drop City (2003), T.C. Boyle's novel about a commune. Dial considers them "time-warp idiots," self-righteous, naive and quick to construct new regulations to replace the ones they'd thrown off. The only person who takes a special interest in Dial and her boy is a paranoid, illiterate sanitation worker, who seems like a direct descendant of Mad Max. (He has the book of Revelation on cassette.) Dial wonders if she'll be murdered in her sleep or merely bored to death by another communal meeting in which "the conversation continued like water dribbling from a hose." Meanwhile, Che keeps wondering which one of these men is his father. The effect is oddly frightening and heartbreaking.
The genius of the novel is Carey's portrayal of this polite little boy, who carries around his "papers" and admonishes Dial not to yell, not to swear, not to tell lies. Even in the midst of her extremity, "he was as happy as he could ever remember, to have her to himself finally, at last, and the prospect of his father, that electric cloud of surprise hanging over him like vapor from an open bathroom door."
The story is not strictly told from Che's point of view -- Carey frequently backtracks and fills in bits of missing history -- but the narrative subtly reflects the boy's elliptical perception of what's happening. Events are scrambled and impressionistic, coming in and out of focus like a memory as Che vacillates between confusion and certainty, fear and delight. And this may be the first novel in which Carey allows himself to slow down. There are even some languid pages here and there as the months stretch out, but they're quickly interrupted by new waves of panic.
Carey's startling, kaleidoscopic plots are now so well known that we can't help overanticipating them, but he's still the master, still capable of staying two steps ahead of us. And in His Illegal Self the most surprising maneuver of all isn't so much a sudden revelation but his tender portrayal of the desperate love between this accidental mother and a little boy who she knows deserves better.
Originally published in The Washington Post
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
July 4, 2016
Lessons from the Outback
It is 1972. Almost-eight-year-old Che Selkirk has been brought up as an orphan prince, living with his rich grandmother in a Park Avenue apartment and on a private lake in New York State. He does not remember either of his parents, founders of a Weathermen-like group at Harvard, now hiding from the law. So when a young woman appears at the door and his grandmother allows him to go with her, Che assumes that this is his mother. As virtually all other reviewers have found, it is impossible to write further without revealing that the woman, known as Dial, is merely an escort. Carey teases the reader with entrancing skill over the first sixty pages, but never mind; he has plenty more tricks up his sleeve.
Unfortunately, things go badly wrong, and Dial ends up with Che in Australia, fleeing to the semi-tropical outback of Queensland. Carey plunges us into the outback setting with remarkable speed; the disorientation is almost as great for us as for the characters. He will fill in the pieces later, but the first encounter with the inhospitable environment is powerful. This is not virgin territory, but semi-wild tracts reached by half-hidden dirt roads where a loose community of hippies have found refuge in tumble-down shacks. Coming to terms with their neighbors, at least for Dial, is as much of a challenge as taming the bush. One of the many things that Carey does so well is balancing the human with the environmental aspects. Dial, an academic about to take up an appointment at Vassar, is an unlikely pioneer, and comes from a very different background to Che, yet both adapt to the place and to one another. I found myself exhilarated by the adventure parts of the story, while being deeply moved by the way in which Dial, Che, and eventually one of the Australians forge deep emotional bonds, showing that families are made of more than blood. For me, this is Carey's richest and most satisfying book yet.
I have been fascinated by the roles played by the outback in Australian literature: a refuge, a challenge, or a vehicle for redemption. All these are found in what might be the greatest of Australian novels, Voss by Patrick White, but Carey is almost as fine. As a literary tradition, this is older and broader still: think Shakespeare's use of the forests in As You Like It or A Midsummer Night's Dream; think Robinson Crusoe; and (with other small boys but a much uglier twist) think Golding's Lord of the Flies. But what makes the book special for me is the analogy between the physical and metaphorical wilderness. Curiously, an outback hippie commune also features in another recent Australian novel, Joan London's The Good Parents, which suggests that the movement had a special intensity down under. But I was equally fascinated by the glimpses of student radical groups such as the Weathermen, whose wilderness is not so much a libertarian escape from the law as a challenge to it. I have been intrigued by echoes of this time in books such as The Darling by Russell Banks or The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez; His Illegal Self goes yet further in filling out this picture, among its many, many other joys.
It is 1972. Almost-eight-year-old Che Selkirk has been brought up as an orphan prince, living with his rich grandmother in a Park Avenue apartment and on a private lake in New York State. He does not remember either of his parents, founders of a Weathermen-like group at Harvard, now hiding from the law. So when a young woman appears at the door and his grandmother allows him to go with her, Che assumes that this is his mother. As virtually all other reviewers have found, it is impossible to write further without revealing that the woman, known as Dial, is merely an escort. Carey teases the reader with entrancing skill over the first sixty pages, but never mind; he has plenty more tricks up his sleeve.
Unfortunately, things go badly wrong, and Dial ends up with Che in Australia, fleeing to the semi-tropical outback of Queensland. Carey plunges us into the outback setting with remarkable speed; the disorientation is almost as great for us as for the characters. He will fill in the pieces later, but the first encounter with the inhospitable environment is powerful. This is not virgin territory, but semi-wild tracts reached by half-hidden dirt roads where a loose community of hippies have found refuge in tumble-down shacks. Coming to terms with their neighbors, at least for Dial, is as much of a challenge as taming the bush. One of the many things that Carey does so well is balancing the human with the environmental aspects. Dial, an academic about to take up an appointment at Vassar, is an unlikely pioneer, and comes from a very different background to Che, yet both adapt to the place and to one another. I found myself exhilarated by the adventure parts of the story, while being deeply moved by the way in which Dial, Che, and eventually one of the Australians forge deep emotional bonds, showing that families are made of more than blood. For me, this is Carey's richest and most satisfying book yet.
I have been fascinated by the roles played by the outback in Australian literature: a refuge, a challenge, or a vehicle for redemption. All these are found in what might be the greatest of Australian novels, Voss by Patrick White, but Carey is almost as fine. As a literary tradition, this is older and broader still: think Shakespeare's use of the forests in As You Like It or A Midsummer Night's Dream; think Robinson Crusoe; and (with other small boys but a much uglier twist) think Golding's Lord of the Flies. But what makes the book special for me is the analogy between the physical and metaphorical wilderness. Curiously, an outback hippie commune also features in another recent Australian novel, Joan London's The Good Parents, which suggests that the movement had a special intensity down under. But I was equally fascinated by the glimpses of student radical groups such as the Weathermen, whose wilderness is not so much a libertarian escape from the law as a challenge to it. I have been intrigued by echoes of this time in books such as The Darling by Russell Banks or The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez; His Illegal Self goes yet further in filling out this picture, among its many, many other joys.
January 23, 2010
Looking through some of the Goodreads reviews on this book shows a real diversity of experiences. Even the story itself is a thing in question. Carey has jammed a lot of ambiguity into His Illegal Self and it starts in the first chapter.
I jumped into this and became totally bewildered. After about 40 pages I assumed the fault was mine so I put the book down and started again some days later. But it is bewildering, it's not me. About as confusing as an eight years old being kidnapped by a fake mum with a code name.
Carey soon comes to rescue the reader with explanations in spades. This is Anna - Dial - narrating now, and she tells us her version of the kidnapping. For a moment Carey puts in copious detail. Then the story continues, bumping along between the voices for Che and Dial, incongruously and with sparse words. A lot of potholes are left for the reader to fill with imagination. I like it.
A sharp searing pain that does not hurt - that's got to be one of the best descriptions of love I've ever heard. Love is presented as an ambiguous thing in this book also. Did Dial's love for Che drive her to kidnap or to sacrifice her life for his benefit? Does Che suffer from 'Stockholm Syndrome' or does he feel rescued? And what is the story with Trevor? "Dial saw that he loved the boy, not in a temperate adult way, but in a good way nonetheless."
I loved the descriptions of the Sunshine Coast, somehow all those negative things seems to add up to a big positive. Following the change in how Dial and Che felt about the community and the country was satisfying.
This book gave me a lot of enjoyment and many 'oh' moments, even at times when I'm not reading, when things suddenly click somewhere in my subconscious. But there are still a couple of things I wonder about that I can't imagine ever being resolved. Why go to Australia, for instance. I wish there could be some reason behind but I don't think there is.
I jumped into this and became totally bewildered. After about 40 pages I assumed the fault was mine so I put the book down and started again some days later. But it is bewildering, it's not me. About as confusing as an eight years old being kidnapped by a fake mum with a code name.
Carey soon comes to rescue the reader with explanations in spades. This is Anna - Dial - narrating now, and she tells us her version of the kidnapping. For a moment Carey puts in copious detail. Then the story continues, bumping along between the voices for Che and Dial, incongruously and with sparse words. A lot of potholes are left for the reader to fill with imagination. I like it.
A sharp searing pain that does not hurt - that's got to be one of the best descriptions of love I've ever heard. Love is presented as an ambiguous thing in this book also. Did Dial's love for Che drive her to kidnap or to sacrifice her life for his benefit? Does Che suffer from 'Stockholm Syndrome' or does he feel rescued? And what is the story with Trevor? "Dial saw that he loved the boy, not in a temperate adult way, but in a good way nonetheless."
I loved the descriptions of the Sunshine Coast, somehow all those negative things seems to add up to a big positive. Following the change in how Dial and Che felt about the community and the country was satisfying.
This book gave me a lot of enjoyment and many 'oh' moments, even at times when I'm not reading, when things suddenly click somewhere in my subconscious. But there are still a couple of things I wonder about that I can't imagine ever being resolved. Why go to Australia, for instance. I wish there could be some reason behind but I don't think there is.
July 22, 2009
Peter Carey's latest novel tells the story of eight-year-old Che, the son of SDS radicals long since gone underground for crimes against the state, who is cared for by his wealthy grandmother. When the grandmother regretably gives Che over to a young woman the boy believes to be his mother, events spiral out of control and before you can say "g'day" the boy finds himself living on a hippie compound in a fecund corner of Australia. Carey handles the child's perspective quite well and the characters Che comes to know and love are well-drawn and memorable. The novel dances around issues of class and radicalism and identity politics without regressing to some kind of outback primitive chic (I was reminded of The Mosquito Coast). Carey's thick, descriptive prose is countered by the narrative punch of 3-5 page chapters.
February 11, 2015
uh... I had tried this book a few years ago and gave up...
This time got it as a downloadable audiobook, so managed to get to the end.
Mostly I was fascinated with the idea of a two-time Booker prize winner. I had sort of liked "Parrot and Olivier". But this one...
Intrigued by the US 60-70 political turmoil, I was very much taken by the premise of a child of two SDS members being accidentally kidnapped and having to go underground. Back story of several family members, Park Ave apartment, Harvard, Vassar etc. Then running from authorities with a mysterious mother/babysitter (?). Many hints, few answers.
After all, I barely got threw it. The whole Australian adventure was just tedious and unrelentingly dark, at times heartbreaking, but very rarely uplifting.
Glad I got through it, but not recommending it.
This time got it as a downloadable audiobook, so managed to get to the end.
Mostly I was fascinated with the idea of a two-time Booker prize winner. I had sort of liked "Parrot and Olivier". But this one...
Intrigued by the US 60-70 political turmoil, I was very much taken by the premise of a child of two SDS members being accidentally kidnapped and having to go underground. Back story of several family members, Park Ave apartment, Harvard, Vassar etc. Then running from authorities with a mysterious mother/babysitter (?). Many hints, few answers.
After all, I barely got threw it. The whole Australian adventure was just tedious and unrelentingly dark, at times heartbreaking, but very rarely uplifting.
Glad I got through it, but not recommending it.
April 3, 2013
I wanted to like this more. There were parts that were amazing, but it just seemed messy. Kind of a throw away novel that allowed Carey to unpackage ideas around the American radical left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Australian hippie communes (seriously, hippie commune negotiations don't get more interesting in fiction, I don't care HOW good of a writer you are).
Throughout this setting, Carey sketches rough ideas about family, heritage, mothers, money and sons. Underneath it, I think Carey even throws a couple Christ-like figures and a cat.
Anyway, it wasn't my favorite Carey, but scattered among the smelly, hippie dirt, there was definitely a chain of prose diamonds.
Throughout this setting, Carey sketches rough ideas about family, heritage, mothers, money and sons. Underneath it, I think Carey even throws a couple Christ-like figures and a cat.
Anyway, it wasn't my favorite Carey, but scattered among the smelly, hippie dirt, there was definitely a chain of prose diamonds.
April 5, 2014
I think I now understand why this book got such mixed reviews. The story itself was quite gripping but only once I got used to the very strange and confusing way that it was written. It was difficult to figure out who was who and what was what, partly due to the writer's lack of punctuation and partly due to the overly poetic style. It was not always obvious which voice was communicating so that took a big of figuring out. I think this book will only be memorable to me for it's strangeness !!!!!
December 20, 2017
It took me so long to start this book. It just sat on my bedside table gathering dust. I’m so glad that I finally read it!
Che is the son of two revolutionaries/political agitators. The story is set in the 1970s. Che lives with his grandmother in New York and never sees his parents. All of his information is based on what he has heard from a teenaged neighbour so Che understands that his parents are seen as dangerous and are perhaps “underground” but he doesn’t really know what this means. Then one day, someone he recognises comes for him.
This story was so unexpectedly brilliant – I loved Che’s journey and the complicated relationships that the characters have with each other. There’s a sense of urgency in Che’s narration – I felt like I was moving towards something quietly terrible through the whole story. Read it!
Che is the son of two revolutionaries/political agitators. The story is set in the 1970s. Che lives with his grandmother in New York and never sees his parents. All of his information is based on what he has heard from a teenaged neighbour so Che understands that his parents are seen as dangerous and are perhaps “underground” but he doesn’t really know what this means. Then one day, someone he recognises comes for him.
This story was so unexpectedly brilliant – I loved Che’s journey and the complicated relationships that the characters have with each other. There’s a sense of urgency in Che’s narration – I felt like I was moving towards something quietly terrible through the whole story. Read it!
January 5, 2026
It's a long time since I've read any Peter Carey, and I had forgotten what a spellbinding writer he can be.
His Illegal Self is brilliant. It tells the story of a young boy living in New York whose parents are caught up in the revolutionary upheavals of the 1960s. The boy lives with his grandmother and is visited by a woman who says she will take him to visit his fugitive mother. What unfolds is a gripping and moving story of identity, belonging and deception as the action switches to a hippy commune in Australia. Highly recommended.
His Illegal Self is brilliant. It tells the story of a young boy living in New York whose parents are caught up in the revolutionary upheavals of the 1960s. The boy lives with his grandmother and is visited by a woman who says she will take him to visit his fugitive mother. What unfolds is a gripping and moving story of identity, belonging and deception as the action switches to a hippy commune in Australia. Highly recommended.
May 23, 2020
I have not read the more famous (and longer) books by this author but found this one quite interesting, mainly for the development of the boy's psyche as he discovers he is (effectively) an orphan and the depiction of the hippy lifestyle in the outback of Australia. I would recommend this book as an introduction to the author as it is considerably shorter than the others!
April 21, 2014
I was so moved by this book, so moved that I feel like words fail me in trying to describe how and why it had such an effect. Perhaps it moved me so because I expected it, this is to be expected of Peter Carey, isn't it? And perhaps I expected it because the blurb on the back of the book told me to expect it; "It may make you cry more than once before it uplifts your spirit in the most lovely, artful, unexpected way". It certainly did that.
Carey's style is so unique and I absolutely love it, but I do tend to struggle to find my feet with it every time I read him. Like a stream of consciousness he launches you into an unfamiliar world with dreamlike observation and mashed up narrative. You have to hold on. Not all of it makes sense and he certainly doesn't spell it out. He expects you to keep up. I invariably start to panic. Hang on, what was that, who said that, stop, I don't think I like this. But you're already on the Carey train and although it's uncomfortable, you know you're not getting off.
I felt confused, I didn't understand what I was being drawn into, and then he doubles back, shows it to you again, from another angle and on you forge. It is uncomfortable and soon way too dark and gritty for my liking. It's seedy, the characters are reproachable, detestable, stupid and agonisingly frustrating. I'm thinking I hate these people. I hate how stupid they are, I hate how dirty they are, I hate how desperate they are and I want to get out, I don't want to be anywhere near them, but I'm compelled to read on - I have to know what happens. I have to know that the boy gets away. I have to know that things get better. Like a bloody accident you can't tear your eyes away from.
How can he write like this? How can a writer scoop you up, draw you in and will you along even though every bone in your body says put it down, walk away. It's like a battle, one you're not going to lose. You believe in the human spirit and you're going to see it through and somehow, somehow that's exactly what he does. He brings you around full circle, full weird and wonky, and as the blurb says, artfully and unexpectedly, full spirit-lifting circle. The kind of spirit-lifting that's grubby and scarred and dirty and oh-so life-like.
It is unsentimental, but unmistakably special. It makes you feel like you're now more for having read it. How can that be? He is an amazing storyteller. This is one of his best.
Carey's style is so unique and I absolutely love it, but I do tend to struggle to find my feet with it every time I read him. Like a stream of consciousness he launches you into an unfamiliar world with dreamlike observation and mashed up narrative. You have to hold on. Not all of it makes sense and he certainly doesn't spell it out. He expects you to keep up. I invariably start to panic. Hang on, what was that, who said that, stop, I don't think I like this. But you're already on the Carey train and although it's uncomfortable, you know you're not getting off.
I felt confused, I didn't understand what I was being drawn into, and then he doubles back, shows it to you again, from another angle and on you forge. It is uncomfortable and soon way too dark and gritty for my liking. It's seedy, the characters are reproachable, detestable, stupid and agonisingly frustrating. I'm thinking I hate these people. I hate how stupid they are, I hate how dirty they are, I hate how desperate they are and I want to get out, I don't want to be anywhere near them, but I'm compelled to read on - I have to know what happens. I have to know that the boy gets away. I have to know that things get better. Like a bloody accident you can't tear your eyes away from.
How can he write like this? How can a writer scoop you up, draw you in and will you along even though every bone in your body says put it down, walk away. It's like a battle, one you're not going to lose. You believe in the human spirit and you're going to see it through and somehow, somehow that's exactly what he does. He brings you around full circle, full weird and wonky, and as the blurb says, artfully and unexpectedly, full spirit-lifting circle. The kind of spirit-lifting that's grubby and scarred and dirty and oh-so life-like.
It is unsentimental, but unmistakably special. It makes you feel like you're now more for having read it. How can that be? He is an amazing storyteller. This is one of his best.
February 27, 2008
Finished, after I thought I wouldn't. With an unusual plot, Carey takes us back to the 70's and the world of SDS (you remember them?) and the Weathermen (and them?) on the lam. Anna Xenos (a.k.a. Dial) just wants to help her old friend, a most notorious radical, by bringing her 8-year-old son (named, I kid you not, Che) for a visit. A funny thing happens on the way to the happy meeting, however. Only I can't say. So... Dial, when plans change suddenly, keeps going with the boy and winds up (whoops) kidnapping him. In deep, she really runs for it... as in travels with Che to Oz (Australia to you, mate).
In the badlands of Australia, we meet Trevor, just one of many unsavory hippies with a most unusual personality. You see, Che thinks Dial is his mommy (confused lad that he is) and wants to meet his daddy, too (fat chance). He was in the care of his grandmother and had everything money could buy, but now that's all changed in a big way. Yes, it's a long way down and financially under to where he finds himself in this rather sad tale.
Although the book begins to drag in the commune Down Under, Carey does occasionally write some "show stopper" lines that readers of "writer's writers" will appreciate. Alas, he forsakes quotation marks (an annoying contrivance seen more and more in contemporary literature), so it's often confusing as to who is talking at times. Couple that with Carey's penchant for short, choppy sentences and paragraphs, and you see how the book can make a reader ambivalent.
In the badlands of Australia, we meet Trevor, just one of many unsavory hippies with a most unusual personality. You see, Che thinks Dial is his mommy (confused lad that he is) and wants to meet his daddy, too (fat chance). He was in the care of his grandmother and had everything money could buy, but now that's all changed in a big way. Yes, it's a long way down and financially under to where he finds himself in this rather sad tale.
Although the book begins to drag in the commune Down Under, Carey does occasionally write some "show stopper" lines that readers of "writer's writers" will appreciate. Alas, he forsakes quotation marks (an annoying contrivance seen more and more in contemporary literature), so it's often confusing as to who is talking at times. Couple that with Carey's penchant for short, choppy sentences and paragraphs, and you see how the book can make a reader ambivalent.
April 14, 2011
It's just chance that I read two Peter Carey novels in a row. While I appreciated the difference in period and setting between this and Parrott & Olivier, I found His Illegal Self to be a lesser work. A young boy named Che lives in New York in the '70s with his wealthy grandmother, who has raised him after gaining custody from his Sixties radical mother. The bulk of the story concerns what happens when Anna (aka Dial) arrives to take Che to see his mother. Plans change, and the two end up in Australia.
Parts of His Illegal Self feel like a boys adventure story; it's a very readable novel and we keep turning the pages to keep up with the new sensations that Che is experiencing. The character of Anna is a vacuum in the book; she fancies herself a radical and gives up a teaching job to go to Australia but her choices feel like products of the author's needs more than actions coming from the character. I think Carey means to highlight class divisions in the movement, since Anna comes from a working class background and her trip to Australia is a truly radical act. We never get inside her head as we do with Che though, and there are too may stretches where she doesn't come to life. His Illegal Self is entertaining but not Peter Carey at his best.
Parts of His Illegal Self feel like a boys adventure story; it's a very readable novel and we keep turning the pages to keep up with the new sensations that Che is experiencing. The character of Anna is a vacuum in the book; she fancies herself a radical and gives up a teaching job to go to Australia but her choices feel like products of the author's needs more than actions coming from the character. I think Carey means to highlight class divisions in the movement, since Anna comes from a working class background and her trip to Australia is a truly radical act. We never get inside her head as we do with Che though, and there are too may stretches where she doesn't come to life. His Illegal Self is entertaining but not Peter Carey at his best.
June 13, 2017
4-1/2 stars
Once again this author sweeps me into his lap and tells me a story. I have recently read 3 of his novels and each one was unique in tone and tale. For the third time I have been sure he is going to fail to end the narrative in a satisfactory fashion because I am so close to the finish and can’t see how he could possibly make anything turn out okay. I am always so wrong.
And once again I am treated to a cornucopia of imaginative phrases and thoughts:
“The geese would be heading up to Canada and the Boeings spinning their white contrails across the cold blue sky—loneliness and hope, expanding like paper flowers in water.”
“Then the generator failed, so the boy would recall when he only lived inside the memory of a man.”
“That was her fatal flaw and it was deep as a septic crack in the heel of her foot, a dirty little crevice that went right down to her bone.”
“…the lonely road which he remembered from the day after the storm. What had been slick and slimy had set hard and the ridge and rut of truck tires were now becoming clouds of dust, like dead souls rising in small whirls and skirmishes.”
“…the skin he left behind would turn to powder dust and centuries would pass and that part of him would never leave the valley.”
Once again this author sweeps me into his lap and tells me a story. I have recently read 3 of his novels and each one was unique in tone and tale. For the third time I have been sure he is going to fail to end the narrative in a satisfactory fashion because I am so close to the finish and can’t see how he could possibly make anything turn out okay. I am always so wrong.
And once again I am treated to a cornucopia of imaginative phrases and thoughts:
“The geese would be heading up to Canada and the Boeings spinning their white contrails across the cold blue sky—loneliness and hope, expanding like paper flowers in water.”
“Then the generator failed, so the boy would recall when he only lived inside the memory of a man.”
“That was her fatal flaw and it was deep as a septic crack in the heel of her foot, a dirty little crevice that went right down to her bone.”
“…the lonely road which he remembered from the day after the storm. What had been slick and slimy had set hard and the ridge and rut of truck tires were now becoming clouds of dust, like dead souls rising in small whirls and skirmishes.”
“…the skin he left behind would turn to powder dust and centuries would pass and that part of him would never leave the valley.”
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