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Bliss
For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack in his front garden, and for nine minutes he becomes a dead guy. Although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. " is an astonishing darkly funny novel which explores how death can be a necessary prelude to life.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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2658 people want to read
About the author
Peter Carey
102 books1,033 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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March 12, 2023
Double Booker Prize winner, Peter Carey's first published work from 1981. Bliss is a darkly comic fable of what happens to Harry Joy after surviving a near fatal heart attack. He has a wife cheating with one of his colleagues, a reckless (drug dealer) son, and (a Communist) daughter who exchanges sexual favours for drugs; yet on the surface they lead a normal suburban life After his heart attack he truly believes that he's living in Hell, as in the Netherworld; and hence his life takes on a whole new meaning as he looks for some form of redemption. A clever and intriguing first novel. 6 out of 12, Three Star read.
2011 read
2011 read
May 10, 2014
So - a friend of mine is going to Greece soon and a friend of his collects honey and I tried some and told her it was the nicest honey I had ever tried (which was true - no exaggeration at all). My friend leaves next week and I thought it would be nice to send over a book with him to the honey collector. BUT, and I struggle to believe this is true, this book is out of print in Australia. This isn't a book by What's His Face No Name - this is Bliss by Peter Carey! What other nation does this to their authors? Really, I'm quite ashamed about this. I walked the city on Friday looking for a copy of this book. In the end I just went into bookshops to shame them. I've had to send the book by mail order from Ireland, of all places. What other book could you possibly send a honey collector, though, if you were to send one from Australia?
* * *
Previous review
A very dear friend of mine once wrote to me, after my sending this book to her, to say that this book was flawed. She is probably right, but there are so many things that I love about it I would forgive it almost anything.
Firstly, it has one of the greatest opening sentences in lit history (okay, so I'm prone to gross exaggeration) - something like, 'Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death that left the most lasting impression on him'. I think Harry Joy is a wonderful name for a character.
The story, in extreme short version and only the very start - is a man has a heart attack and dies. Prior to dying he had the perfect life, wife who loved him, two beautiful kids, job he loves, friends ... and so on. They bring him back to life and he finds, believes, he has actually died and gone to hell. His wife is having an affair, his kids are drug dealers and prostitutes and so on and so forth - everything is the same, nothing is the same.
There is a character in this that writes letters he never sends to companies he works for telling them he knows they are evil. Dear god, please do not make that character be me.
It is the end of this book that I love the most - a single image at what is close to the very end that has stayed with me forever and ever - Harry's love letter that took seven years to deliver. Now, there is a beautiful thing.
* * *
Previous review
A very dear friend of mine once wrote to me, after my sending this book to her, to say that this book was flawed. She is probably right, but there are so many things that I love about it I would forgive it almost anything.
Firstly, it has one of the greatest opening sentences in lit history (okay, so I'm prone to gross exaggeration) - something like, 'Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death that left the most lasting impression on him'. I think Harry Joy is a wonderful name for a character.
The story, in extreme short version and only the very start - is a man has a heart attack and dies. Prior to dying he had the perfect life, wife who loved him, two beautiful kids, job he loves, friends ... and so on. They bring him back to life and he finds, believes, he has actually died and gone to hell. His wife is having an affair, his kids are drug dealers and prostitutes and so on and so forth - everything is the same, nothing is the same.
There is a character in this that writes letters he never sends to companies he works for telling them he knows they are evil. Dear god, please do not make that character be me.
It is the end of this book that I love the most - a single image at what is close to the very end that has stayed with me forever and ever - Harry's love letter that took seven years to deliver. Now, there is a beautiful thing.
July 8, 2023
Life was once Bliss. Life was once Hell. Life was once a marvel of richness and variety.
Is life still a marvel of richness and variety? Is life still Hell? Is life still Bliss?
Does life condemn us all to a Bliss/Hell of our own making? The answer is probably yes.
A winner of the Miles Franklin in 1981 this must have appealed to the judge’s for its satirical take on then modern city life, advertising for example, and the alternative culture that had sprouted up in northern New South Wales around the Mount Warning/Nimbin area. As satire, it was at times laugh out loud funny, but also became repetitive and seemed to overstay its welcome.
Recommended to those that like/dislike life and the Bliss and Hell that was once and still is satire.
Is life still a marvel of richness and variety? Is life still Hell? Is life still Bliss?
Does life condemn us all to a Bliss/Hell of our own making? The answer is probably yes.
A winner of the Miles Franklin in 1981 this must have appealed to the judge’s for its satirical take on then modern city life, advertising for example, and the alternative culture that had sprouted up in northern New South Wales around the Mount Warning/Nimbin area. As satire, it was at times laugh out loud funny, but also became repetitive and seemed to overstay its welcome.
Recommended to those that like/dislike life and the Bliss and Hell that was once and still is satire.
September 19, 2007
I met Peter Carey at a book signing in the small general books collection of the university textbook store that I worked at. I told him that I had skipped a "meteorology and weather" class to see him. He signed my copy of Bliss "Plenty of nice weather in this book."
October 4, 2023
CRITIQUE:
From the Suburban to the Subtropical (to the Subversive)
In the late 1970's, when this novel is set, Harry Joy owns an advertising agency in some provincial Australian city, possibly modeled on Sydney and/or Brisbane.
I suspect it's Sydney (rather then Brisbane), because Harry's clients include multinational oil and chemical companies (like Mobil and the fictitious Krappe Chemicals), from whom he generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and commissions each year.
On the other hand, despite their income and lifestyle, Harry's wife, Bettina, hates "its wide colonial verandahs, its slow muddy river, its sleepy streets, its small town pretensions", all of which sounds more like Brisbane at the time.
About half of the novel is spent in the suburban city, while the rest takes place in the subtropical hinterland inland from Byron Bay on the north coast of New South Wales, where there are communes of hippies and religious cults like Ananda Marga.
"On the Outposts of the American Empire"
The narrator says of Harry and his ad agency:
The Americans, Barbara
Bettina, a capable creative in her own right, is obsessed with moving to and working in New York. She can't resist its allure.
Harry's now deceased father, Vance, once said:
Advertising is at the centre of this good and evil, because it promotes capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and globalism.
The narrator explains the attitude towards Americans in the Australian city:
Bettina thinks of herself as -
"Refugees of/ from a Broken Culture"
Harry Joy dies of a heart attack on the first page of the novel, when he is 39 years old. However, he is revived in hospital, despite believing, when he recovers, that he has died and gone to Hell.
Everywhere the Good Bloke looks, both at home and away, he sees Evil.
North America becomes synonymous with the evils of advertising, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and globalism. It makes him question his profession.
The Making of a Counterculture
Harry's political awakening begins when he discovers that his daughter, Lucy, has been a member of the Communist Party, after which he meets Honey Barbara in the Hilton Hotel, where he has been staying since his release from hospital.
Honey Barbara works for two months a year as an escort (she meets Harry in this capacity), then returns to her environmentalist commune in the country (Bog Onion Road, "past giant fibreglass pineapples and bananas surrounded by buses and people with secret pimples on their arses") for the rest of the year. Bettina describes her personal style as "California, 1968".
Harry quickly falls in love with Honey Barbara:
When Harry obtains a copy of a cancer map, Honey Barbara is quick to realise its significance. It reveals the toxicity of various products, and areas where they have a carcinogenic effect on residents.
"This Was No Bullshit Story"
Lucy tells Honey Barbara:
Ironically, Bettina gets cancer from exposure to the benzene in petrol over a long period of time, and decides to wreak revenge on the local Mobil executives.
David, Harry's son, escapes to New York, and Harry tracks Honey Barbara down to Bog Onion Road, where he builds a hut for himself in the rain forest.
Harry becomes obsessed with trees and their collective consciousness. Honey Barbara's father tells Harry:
"(Filial) Love Story [The Story of the Children of Harry Joy and Honey Barbara]"
Honey Barbara initially resents Harry's arrival at the commune (without warning her he was coming), but eventually changes her mind:
Inevitably, nothing will happen in this last story, nothing but death (though children are adverted to). Harry dies again when he is 75, by which time he has "talked to the lightning, the trees, the fire, gained authority over bees and blossoms, told stories...and conducted ceremonies."
"Bliss" is full of such stories, all of them wondrous and told wonderfully.
Harry's stories promote a greater closeness to nature and a greater distance from urban Americanism, even if it could be said that Peter Carey was (and potentially remains) situated in this Americanism and New York City in particular.
VERSE:
Lunch at Milano's, 1977
At Milano's, he always drinks fine wine.
The waiter likes his pencil thin moustache,
A Sydney socialite lies in his bed,
Though her very name he can't remember.
Well, it's a sign of these forgotten times,
There's an ounce of grass from his Byron stash,
He's got an appetite that can't be fed,
'Til late in the last week of September.
SOUNDTRACK:
From the Suburban to the Subtropical (to the Subversive)
In the late 1970's, when this novel is set, Harry Joy owns an advertising agency in some provincial Australian city, possibly modeled on Sydney and/or Brisbane.
I suspect it's Sydney (rather then Brisbane), because Harry's clients include multinational oil and chemical companies (like Mobil and the fictitious Krappe Chemicals), from whom he generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and commissions each year.
On the other hand, despite their income and lifestyle, Harry's wife, Bettina, hates "its wide colonial verandahs, its slow muddy river, its sleepy streets, its small town pretensions", all of which sounds more like Brisbane at the time.
About half of the novel is spent in the suburban city, while the rest takes place in the subtropical hinterland inland from Byron Bay on the north coast of New South Wales, where there are communes of hippies and religious cults like Ananda Marga.
"On the Outposts of the American Empire"
The narrator says of Harry and his ad agency:
"Here on the outposts of the American Empire, he conducted his business more or less in the American style, although with not quite the degree of seriousness the Americans liked...
"His great talent in life was to be a Good Bloke...
"He could walk into a room and sit down and everybody would be happy to have him, even if all he ever did was smile, for they imagined behind that moustache, behind the smile it hid, something sterner, more critical and yet, also, tolerant, so that when he smiled they felt themselves approved of and they vied with each other to like him best...
"It all came down to the feeling that he was intelligent enough to be critical of you, but was not."
The Americans, Barbara
Bettina, a capable creative in her own right, is obsessed with moving to and working in New York. She can't resist its allure.
Harry's now deceased father, Vance, once said:
"In New York there are towers of glass. It is the most beautiful and terrible city on earth. All good, all evil exist there...If you know where to look, you can find the devil..."
Advertising is at the centre of this good and evil, because it promotes capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and globalism.
The narrator explains the attitude towards Americans in the Australian city:
"The town had an ambivalent attitude towards Americans, envying their power and wishing to reject it and embrace it all at once."
Bettina thinks of herself as -
"Marooned on the edge of the Empire, [where] she had spent ten years waiting for Harry's promise that they would go to New York."
"Refugees of/ from a Broken Culture"
Harry Joy dies of a heart attack on the first page of the novel, when he is 39 years old. However, he is revived in hospital, despite believing, when he recovers, that he has died and gone to Hell.
Everywhere the Good Bloke looks, both at home and away, he sees Evil.
North America becomes synonymous with the evils of advertising, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and globalism. It makes him question his profession.
The Making of a Counterculture
Harry's political awakening begins when he discovers that his daughter, Lucy, has been a member of the Communist Party, after which he meets Honey Barbara in the Hilton Hotel, where he has been staying since his release from hospital.
Honey Barbara works for two months a year as an escort (she meets Harry in this capacity), then returns to her environmentalist commune in the country (Bog Onion Road, "past giant fibreglass pineapples and bananas surrounded by buses and people with secret pimples on their arses") for the rest of the year. Bettina describes her personal style as "California, 1968".
Harry quickly falls in love with Honey Barbara:
"He knew he would have to find Honey Barbara and leave the city. He could not live here [in the suburbs]"...
"She was Honey Barbara, pantheist, healer, whore...
"For the rest of his life he would remember the night when Honey Barbara drove out his devil. Then he thought it was gone for good and she was the rain on the roof, the trees he had never seen, the river he had never tasted."
When Harry obtains a copy of a cancer map, Honey Barbara is quick to realise its significance. It reveals the toxicity of various products, and areas where they have a carcinogenic effect on residents.
"This Was No Bullshit Story"
Lucy tells Honey Barbara:
"My mother has swallowed the whole thing. She believes the whole American myth. She believes General Motors are nice people. She thinks Nixon was unlucky. She thinks I.T.T wouldn't lie. She believes in what she does [in advertising]."
Ironically, Bettina gets cancer from exposure to the benzene in petrol over a long period of time, and decides to wreak revenge on the local Mobil executives.
David, Harry's son, escapes to New York, and Harry tracks Honey Barbara down to Bog Onion Road, where he builds a hut for himself in the rain forest.
Harry becomes obsessed with trees and their collective consciousness. Honey Barbara's father tells Harry:
"When you talk about trees, it sounds like you want a fuck."
"(Filial) Love Story [The Story of the Children of Harry Joy and Honey Barbara]"
Honey Barbara initially resents Harry's arrival at the commune (without warning her he was coming), but eventually changes her mind:
"I am not going to waste my whole life hating you."
Inevitably, nothing will happen in this last story, nothing but death (though children are adverted to). Harry dies again when he is 75, by which time he has "talked to the lightning, the trees, the fire, gained authority over bees and blossoms, told stories...and conducted ceremonies."
"Bliss" is full of such stories, all of them wondrous and told wonderfully.
Harry's stories promote a greater closeness to nature and a greater distance from urban Americanism, even if it could be said that Peter Carey was (and potentially remains) situated in this Americanism and New York City in particular.
VERSE:
Lunch at Milano's, 1977
At Milano's, he always drinks fine wine.
The waiter likes his pencil thin moustache,
A Sydney socialite lies in his bed,
Though her very name he can't remember.
Well, it's a sign of these forgotten times,
There's an ounce of grass from his Byron stash,
He's got an appetite that can't be fed,
'Til late in the last week of September.
SOUNDTRACK:
December 11, 2023
I still remember vividly reading this shocking book when it first came out in 1981, but have been a fan of Carey’s ever since. It describes hell on earth in the form of a comic fable and almost every human vice is included. This book is now deservedly an Australian modern classic and has been adapted for film and even opera (!).
June 9, 2014
I am a bit of a sucker for black comedy and this book is exactly that. I found the whole story entertaining in the extreme. One thing Carey can certainly do is write well and the prose in this book is perfect. Some scenes where he is describing the Australian bush are superb. Add to that many beautifully drawn characters and I can understand why people are already calling this book a classic. A most enjoyable read, highly recommended - and I loved the neat little ending!
October 5, 2010
Just couldn't get past page 200. Starts off great-- magnificently actually-- and then degenerates into wholly unbelievable chain of events. Actually, the events are believable-- the main character nearly dies, thinks he's in hell and then is thrown by (his hideous) family into mental instituion. That I can believe-- instutionalization happens-- however, Carey tells it likes its one big joke (except he doesn't really make it funny either.) If you really lust after satire, you might like this, but I got no feeling or emotion from any of these characters. To me, they were cardboard and the author was just pushing them around for plot purposes.
June 24, 2014
Reading Carey's tale of the Joy family and their acquaintances is like biting into a tantalizing piece of fruit only to realize it is rotten in the middle, and no matter how much effort one puts into erasing the taste, the foulness lingers. Harry Joy (subtle name, huh?) is a fat-cat Australian in the early 80s who lives decadently off of his success in advertising as does his severely dysfunctional family. He is known as a "good guy" simply because he chooses to ignore anything that might spoil his superficial life. Joy ends up dying for a few minutes and that, dear reader, is what shakes his world, and from then on he believes he's in Hell once he sees his family for what they really are. As has been written in numerous other tales, our protagonist must lose his life to gain it. Of course, as we know the only thing that can appease/rescue one from the dirty corporate world (or the degenerate city) is pastoral life. Cue entrance of hippie/pixie/hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Honey Barbara. Blah blah. Tragedy and farce ensue.
March 18, 2023
Never has anyone written this well about a droopy moustache as Peter Carey does in this here bookum.
Wiry? Uh huh yeah.
Bristly? Uh huh, that’s right.
Is it droopy? Oh you know it’s droopy! Uh huh ummmm. Uh!
Two nights ago, on a dumpling-hot Brisbane eve, I pushed my face against a melting scoop of matcha gelato. Sticky cream covered my moustache just below my pink nose. No amount of licking or pawing could remove the ghost of ice cream past. I thought of Harry Joy and wondered how he navigated eating. His moustache drooped so, surely it collected soup and Greek yoghurt.
Much to ponder.
Wiry? Uh huh yeah.
Bristly? Uh huh, that’s right.
Is it droopy? Oh you know it’s droopy! Uh huh ummmm. Uh!
Two nights ago, on a dumpling-hot Brisbane eve, I pushed my face against a melting scoop of matcha gelato. Sticky cream covered my moustache just below my pink nose. No amount of licking or pawing could remove the ghost of ice cream past. I thought of Harry Joy and wondered how he navigated eating. His moustache drooped so, surely it collected soup and Greek yoghurt.
Much to ponder.
January 7, 2015
Wow. What a bizarre and lovely book. I can't tell you much about what happens, because there are too many twists and turns in the life of Harry Joy, and to mention them would be to spoil the story. If you read it, just let it flow. Don't think too hard about it. It's like a window into a weird, paranoid, 80's version of Queensland, where everyone wears white linen suits and is quite mad. Great holiday read, especially if you're in the vicinity of a rainforest.
*UPDATE* I just accidentally found the movie version on SBS which is BRILLIANT!! The screenplay was adapted by Peter Carey, and I've never seen such perfect casting in a book-to-film translation before. I knew who everyone was before they were even introduced, it was like the filmmakers had looked inside my head and pulled them straight out of my imagination. (Betty should have been a brunette, but it was the 80's so the blonde perm is appropriate. I'll forgive that one). I also LOVED all the visual gags that really enhanced some of the funnier parts of the book, taking a very literal approach to things that were more conceptual on paper, e.g. the scene in the restaurant between Betty & Joel, followed by the sardines. My god, those sardines flopping around are hysterical!! Read the book, then watch the movie.
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/...
*UPDATE* I just accidentally found the movie version on SBS which is BRILLIANT!! The screenplay was adapted by Peter Carey, and I've never seen such perfect casting in a book-to-film translation before. I knew who everyone was before they were even introduced, it was like the filmmakers had looked inside my head and pulled them straight out of my imagination. (Betty should have been a brunette, but it was the 80's so the blonde perm is appropriate. I'll forgive that one). I also LOVED all the visual gags that really enhanced some of the funnier parts of the book, taking a very literal approach to things that were more conceptual on paper, e.g. the scene in the restaurant between Betty & Joel, followed by the sardines. My god, those sardines flopping around are hysterical!! Read the book, then watch the movie.
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/...
January 26, 2008
This is the story of a man who dies on the operating table for a few minutes but then is revived. He believes, however, the he has died and gone to hell. And his belief that this is true is firmly upheld as he faces the awful truth about the dysfunctional state of his family for the first time.
This is one of the most bizarre books I have ever read. It was utterly horrifying in parts, full of twists and turns and fascinating characters. I was thoroughly captivated by it and think about it often.
I learned from it that eating a table spoon of honey every day will make your eyes bright, clear and beautiful.
This is one of the most bizarre books I have ever read. It was utterly horrifying in parts, full of twists and turns and fascinating characters. I was thoroughly captivated by it and think about it often.
I learned from it that eating a table spoon of honey every day will make your eyes bright, clear and beautiful.
February 6, 2020
One of my favourite books of all time. Brilliant characters, so funny and brilliant satire about modern society.
December 1, 2019
Only certain kinds of people will appreciate this book. You have to be willing to confront death and dying, sexual abuse, mental illness, infidelity, dysfunctional families, desperate ambition, and making money off cancer-causing products. But if you can handle all that, it's really a beautiful story that shows how someone can find a way to health and joy in life despite all that. It takes many years and requires many painful experiences but if you can tolerate despair and have enough patience to wait it out, there can be a happy ending. I was touched by this tale of what can happen on the road to bliss.
June 18, 2025
i had been wanting to read this for like ever coz the concept is cool but what a shame it was so goddam mid
June 24, 2025
A successful and complacent family man has a near-death experience and massively reevaluates his life, giving opportunity for those in his orbit to do likewise. Told in a patchwork, Australian style, Peter Carey’s storytelling is always interesting, involving sudden changes in time and place and voice. Bit of an environmental health message as well. I gave it 3 stars because I think some of his later novels are better.
August 21, 2015
Peter Carey is one of the greatest living novelists, widely tipped to become both Australia’s next Nobel prize winner for literature and the first man to win three Booker prizes. In 2010 I read his second Booker-prize winner, True History of the Kelly Gang, and found it to be a good book that only grew stronger in my memory. So it seems like a good idea to read his entire canon.
Bliss is his first novel, following the unfortunate circumstances of Harry Joy, who has a heart attack one day and dies for nine minutes before being resuscitated. He comes back to find that his wife is cheating on him, his son is selling drugs and his advertising company has for years been promoting carcinogens. He believes himself to literally be in hell.
There’s a strange, semi-dreamlike feeling hanging over much of Bliss, as though you’re reading it through a clouded pane of glass. This is a stylistic choice; apparently many of Carey’s early works have an essence of magical realism to them. Certainly, Carey seems to draw inspiration from Borges and Marquez; South America is often mentioned, and the novel takes place in an unspecified tropical land which is probably Queensland, the prose thick with frangipani and jacarandas and banana trees.
I guess it’s a decent book. It’s the kind of novel that’s difficult to review, because I personally found it boring yet I know it’s objectively good. I still want to read more of Carey, and I own his next book, Illywhacker, but I may skip past that and read his Booker-winning Oscar and Lucinda or the intriguing Jack Maggs.
Bliss is his first novel, following the unfortunate circumstances of Harry Joy, who has a heart attack one day and dies for nine minutes before being resuscitated. He comes back to find that his wife is cheating on him, his son is selling drugs and his advertising company has for years been promoting carcinogens. He believes himself to literally be in hell.
There’s a strange, semi-dreamlike feeling hanging over much of Bliss, as though you’re reading it through a clouded pane of glass. This is a stylistic choice; apparently many of Carey’s early works have an essence of magical realism to them. Certainly, Carey seems to draw inspiration from Borges and Marquez; South America is often mentioned, and the novel takes place in an unspecified tropical land which is probably Queensland, the prose thick with frangipani and jacarandas and banana trees.
I guess it’s a decent book. It’s the kind of novel that’s difficult to review, because I personally found it boring yet I know it’s objectively good. I still want to read more of Carey, and I own his next book, Illywhacker, but I may skip past that and read his Booker-winning Oscar and Lucinda or the intriguing Jack Maggs.
December 15, 2012
Peter Carey is a wizard with words. The story is hilarious and not a little crazy, but it is told with a deep regard for humanity. I guess you could call it a dark comedy, touching on things like industrial poisons, big business, advertising, and family dynamics. I saw the movie nearly twenty years ago, and have wanted to see it again, but I can't find it. (There is a popular movie called "Bliss", but it isn't the same one.) It wasn't at the library, but I did find this book. I read "The Tax Inspector" before, but didn't take note of the author at the time.
The Times review says it well: "Those of us who row in the galleys of fiction reviewing fall on a new author of such talent as on a refreshing and intoxicating drink".
I was very moved by "Bliss". It's a long love story with many well-developed characters. Carey sees the humanity in each person, and tenderly exposes their inner strengths and weaknesses.
He writes beautiful prose, descriptive and flowing. I was delighted. I'll read it again in a few years. I recommend it to anyone with an open mind and appreciation for humanity and nature.
The film was made in Australia in 1985. The characters are true to the book, and the story doesn't vary much (if at all) from the book.
Next on my list is Carey's "The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith".
The Times review says it well: "Those of us who row in the galleys of fiction reviewing fall on a new author of such talent as on a refreshing and intoxicating drink".
I was very moved by "Bliss". It's a long love story with many well-developed characters. Carey sees the humanity in each person, and tenderly exposes their inner strengths and weaknesses.
He writes beautiful prose, descriptive and flowing. I was delighted. I'll read it again in a few years. I recommend it to anyone with an open mind and appreciation for humanity and nature.
The film was made in Australia in 1985. The characters are true to the book, and the story doesn't vary much (if at all) from the book.
Next on my list is Carey's "The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith".
January 25, 2021
I love Carey's prose sentence by sentence in this novel. There some totally brilliant lines here. Theoretically, I also love the inventiveness of the novel's premise. And I found some disparate scenes very amusing. But as a whole... the book didn't work for me to the extent that I stopped reading after 2/3. (And what a great relief I felt as I put it down to be finally leaving its universe!) The problem was, it felt to me as if Carey wrote this novel at a great remove from his characters and perhaps that was also why I felt so removed from them. It's not like I have to like characters to love a story, not at all, I am actually more interested in darkness, but I want to feel close to them, to almost smell them, hear the hum of their blood. Instead, I felt I was placed at a great distance from them, more precisely - above them and near Carey, and was supposed to share a smirk with him together at their mishaps and flaws. But I don't care reading books from such an elevated position.
February 15, 2014
This isn't my favorite of Peter Carey, and I'd hesitate to recommend it to people who haven't read him; it's definitely a first novel, stuffed with digressions and minor characters that don't quite work, and also the satirical tone has an aspect of contempt and despair that could be off-putting even if you like that kind of thing (sort of an early Martin Amis quality). But it's often beautiful and surprising, and it covers a lot of territory— Carey seems equally interested in the emotional and practical concerns of his characters whether they're in an ad agency or a backwoods hippie survivalist commune. And I like stories about people who go through a life-changing experience and reinvent themselves, but then aren't finished changing for all time, and hesitate and renege and have to reinvent themselves some more.
February 19, 2024
A combination of Updike's Rabbit and Toole's Ignatius, the story of a man who dies and comes back after less than 10 pages is quite a dark and cynical comedy. Between being an innocent bystander to a deeply disturbed individual, Harry Joy is more than just a silly name with very overt symbolism(Hairy Joy, something that's positive but also not inherently a positive association, as hairy situations aren't good).
The characters are bizarre, farcical, and very sarcastically written, but done in such a poetic and verbose manner that they don't remain static and goofy, but fully fleshed-out and believable, where even the manic pixie dream prostitute that is Honey becomes a more complex and confused individual who gets wrapped up in Harry Joy's broken world.
A lot of the events can be viewed as tragic, but as the satirical tones indicate, they're meant to be taken with multiple grains of salt. The obsessions and patterns of the story take on a surreal quality that comes up as both ignorant of reality and embracing it.
A weird and wacky tragicomedy.
The characters are bizarre, farcical, and very sarcastically written, but done in such a poetic and verbose manner that they don't remain static and goofy, but fully fleshed-out and believable, where even the manic pixie dream prostitute that is Honey becomes a more complex and confused individual who gets wrapped up in Harry Joy's broken world.
A lot of the events can be viewed as tragic, but as the satirical tones indicate, they're meant to be taken with multiple grains of salt. The obsessions and patterns of the story take on a surreal quality that comes up as both ignorant of reality and embracing it.
A weird and wacky tragicomedy.
July 15, 2018
Bliss is the sort of novel that tests you, from back when “difficult” was synonymous with “literature”. Some thirty seven years later a satirical examination of the Australia of the early eighties that is both crushingly cynical and laughably optimistic is a big ask of a reader, but those who stick through with it might find paradise waiting for them at the end.
There’s a spell woven within the pages of Bliss that belies its frequent vulgarity. You have to deal with light (and inexplicable) incest, a Kafkaesque nightmare, and an elephant to get there, but Bliss will reward you.
There’s a spell woven within the pages of Bliss that belies its frequent vulgarity. You have to deal with light (and inexplicable) incest, a Kafkaesque nightmare, and an elephant to get there, but Bliss will reward you.
August 13, 2021
Een man die drie keer dood gaat, zou de hele korte samenvatting kunnen zijn van dit boek. Sterke kanten zijn de uitgesproken karakters, niet alleen van de hoofdpersoon maar ook de personen om hem heen. Het is nooit rustig in het boek, de ene heftige gebeurtenis na de ander, creatief geschreven. Veel dynamiek, een beetje teveel, het schiet dan soms wat door (zoals in de psychiatrische inrichting waarin de hoofdpersoon wordt opgesloten door toedoen van zijn familie). En dan de laatste 50 pagina's valt het weer een beetje stil, is er te weinig ontwikkeling in de karakters. Werd het een beetje uitzitten.
December 3, 2020
This was a good book although I’m not a massive fan of Peter Carey. Any woman with ambition has to be a murderous psychopath at core. Thief the last book of his I read, the woman looked like a Bratz doll. He’s always objectifying the women, and a good woman is one that doesn’t try to enter a man’s world. Beyond that it’s much better than Thief, which annoyed me with it’s affected machismo. Still has over obscure laboured prose that it was a very interesting book and some of it is beautifully written
September 18, 2024
Darkly funny first novel, with vigorous and often hilarious language, but with two flaws: it's another example of the writerly conceit of modern life as, quite literally, hell (and yet offering no constructive alternative except various kinds of surrender); and it could have ended at any point after about the halfway mark and it would have hardly made any difference. But I'm now curious about Carey's other work, mainly to see if he has something more to offer than the usual potted jabs at consumerism and modernity.
August 23, 2021
Not a fan. I'm a fan of most of Carey's other long form, but I can't stand his short form. Bliss read like his short form to me. A bit too silly and self-indulgent. A whole lot of nothing was going on a lot of the time. Didn't really engage me until the last quarter of the book.
August 19, 2022
The plot, premise, prose and tone were really fun, pleasingly daring, an exploration of which parts of life are hell on earth. I felt that the way that the women were marginalized and sexually exploited both in their fictional lives, and in the services of a good story, was very much contrary to the plot, premise and tone. Not only a man's world, but a man's story world too. It's not unkind or thoughtless, which makes it harder to look past. In the end, Harry stalks Honey for five years - she feels she even needs to put a lock on her door - until she relents, that's the ending we needed to read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 28, 2024
“Perhaps paradoxically she also believed the world of the mad to be at once more intense and more beautiful and therefore, romantically, envied it.”
August 7, 2025
Really great story I loved this one for a lot of different reasons, kind of weird and lots of beautiful imagery of the Australian bush makes me want to make homemade hummus
October 7, 2017
Almost Dickension in its vividness - a great example of evocative Australian literature
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