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Summary
Summary
Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the 1954 Redex Trial, a weeks-long endurance contest of a car race that circles the entire continent. With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator: deposed quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher Willie Bachhuber. If they win the Redex, the Bobs name alone will get them a dealership, and Willie will have recharged a life currently ground to a halt. But before any of that might happen, their official strip maps will lead them, without warning, out of the comfortable white Australia they know so well. A breakneck, often hilarious, eye-opening adventure that at the same time reminds us how white people took possession of a timeless culture--the high purpose they invented, and the crimes they committed along the way-- A Long Way from Home is Peter Carey's late-style masterpiece.
Author Notes
Peter Carey was born on May 7, 1943 in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia. His first two books, The Fat Man in History (1974) and War Crimes (1979), were short story collections. His first novel, Bliss, was published in 1982. At the time he was balancing his writing career with the operation of an advertising agency in Sydney, and his books were not generally known outside of Australia. He began to receive international attention when Illywhacker was published in 1985. He won the Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. His other works include The Tax Inspector, Parrot and Olivier in America, and The Chemistry of Tears. He also won the Miles Franklin Award three times. In 2015 he made the Australian Book Designers Association Award shortlist for his title Amnesia. This title also made the 2015 Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlist.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Carey's unfortunate latest (after Amnesia) starts out being about a race and ends up being about race, but it's marred by so many "what's going on here?" moments and convenient plot-changing contrivances that readers will wonder what story Carey's trying to tell, and how. In postwar Australia, car salesman Titch Bobs decides to enter the Redex Trial, a grueling endurance car race around Australia, with the goal of winning and using the ensuing celebrity to open his own dealership. His crew: his wife (and driver) Irene, and his neighbor (and navigator), quiz show champion Willie Bachhuber. Carey takes a lot of time setting up his narrative chess pieces, and it's not long after the race starts (over a third of a way into the novel) that a family tragedy breaks up Titch's crew and eventually sends one of them on a baffling adventure that unearths a life-changing secret and lays bare the shameful history of indignities perpetrated against Aboriginal people. Carey's prose is cutting and often quite funny ("On the far shore stood a moustached white man who should have been told, years ago, don't wear shorts."), but that alone doesn't save the overly shaggy story. This won't go down as one of Carey's better efforts. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
This picaresque comedy goes thematically deeper as it heads into the Outback.The antic tone of this 14th novel by Australian-born Carey (Amnesia, 2015, etc.) belies its serious ambition. The comic spirit slyly suggests Shakespeare, an inquiry into identity and the farcical human existence. Chapters alternate through much of the novel between two narrators. The first is Irene Bobs, a tiny woman married to the equally diminutive Titch, though the accomplishments of both will loom large as the novel progresses. He is the best car salesman in their part of Australia. She is a demon driver, as she'll show during the grueling Redex Trial, a contest of automobiles circling the continent that is intended to demonstrate their endurance rather than sheer speed. The second narrator is their taller neighbor, Willie Bachhuber, a teacher (or "a chalk-and-talker" in the novel's parlance) and a minor celebrity as a game-show whiz. Willie is as reflective and remorseful as Irene is impulsive and resilient; even though the chapters never identify who is speaking, the difference in voice and perspective is evident. In order to launch his dealership, Titch places a big gamble on entering the Redex Trial, with Irene as driver (though she'll never be given credit, as a woman in the 1950s) and Willie as navigator. Irene is skeptical over the prospect of "two hundred lunatics circumnavigating the continent of Australia, more than ten thousand miles over outback roads so rough they might crack your chassis clean in half." But off they go! And off goes the novel in some surprising directions at which the setup barely hints, as it illuminates a country very different from the "monocultural" one upon which the government insists, discovers that racial identity may not be as simple as black and white, and upends the relationships between the married couple and their neighbor and the very notion of who is the novel's protagonist and who is the sidekick.In the guise of a period piece, Carey's novel raises issues of culture and race that carry a thoroughly contemporary charge. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
With an exceptional economy of style, Carey (The Chemistry of Tears, 2012), a rare two-time Man Booker Prize winner, returns to his homeland, Australia, in 1954 and swiftly immerses readers in the world of Irene Bobs, happiest behind the wheel, and her car salesman husband, Titch, as they attempt to start a new business and home in Bacchus Marsh, in Southeast Australia. In this freeze-frame introduction, Irene, Titch, and their two children appear to be a perfect family. The novel then switches between the perspectives of Irene and her neighbor, Willie Bachhuber, a bookish schoolteacher, as Irene and Titch enter the grueling Redex Trial, a 10,000-mile race in which, with Willie as their navigator, they circumnavigate inhospitable Australia. As Carey guides readers across this vast, often barren landscape and into each character's complicated personal history, he further delves into his career-long fascination with the dark underbelly of Australian history. Carey is a giant of contemporary fiction, and with this powerful, pertinent exploration of race and national identity, the importance and resonance of his work is freshly and enjoyably affirmed.--Moran, Alexander Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IMPEACHMENT: A Citizen's Guide, by Cass R. Sunstein. (Harvard University, paper, $7.95.) True to its subtitle, Sunstein's short book is a guide to everything you need to know about impeachment. This topic has taken on new urgency, though Sunstein does not take up the Trump presidency directly. THE TEMPTATION OF FORGIVENESS, by Donna Leon. (Atlantic Monthly, $26.) Commissario Guido Brunetti embarks on another atmospheric Venetian criminal investigation, this time coming to the aid of a woman whose husband has been attacked on one of the city's stone bridges. A TOKYO ROMANCE: A Memoir, by lan Buruma. (Penguin Press, $26.) The editor of The New York Review of Books recaptures his youthful experiences in the avant-garde film and theater world of the postwar city. "I always felt drawn to outsiders," Buruma writes. "Hovering on the fringes was where I liked to be." A LONG WAY FROM HOME, by Peter Carey. (Knopf, $26.95.) This latest novel from the author of "True History of the Kelly Gang" and "Oscar and Lucinda" follows a married couple and their bachelor neighbor on a bumptious 10,000-mile auto race in 1950s Australia. MY FATHER'S WAKE: How the Irish Teach Us How to Live, Love and Die, by Kevin Toolis. (Da Capo, $26.) The hospital death of Toolis's brother, followed by his father's death in small-town Ireland, led him to examine death rituals around the world. The Irish wake, he says, is "the best guide to life you could ever have." THE NEIGHBORHOOD, by Mario Vargas Llosa. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Written telenova-style, with chapters alternating among various characters, Vargas Llosa's 20 th novel is an edgy send-up of life in Peru before the downfall of Alberto Fujimori. Wealthy friends find themselves in a difficult situation when one is blackmailed by a tabloid editor and the other, a lawyer, tries to help. VICTORIANS UNDONE: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum, by Kathryn Hughes. (HarperCollins, $29.95.) Hughes's detailed account of five notable 19th-century body parts topples great figures from their pedestals. Made rather than given, these bodies tell an engrossing story about the culture that fashioned them. THE WHICH WAY TREE, by Elizabeth Crook. (Little, Brown, $26.) Crook's western-inflected novel follows a pair of siblings on their hunt for the wild panther that upended their lives. JULIÁN IS A MERMAID, by Jessica Love. (Candlewick, $16.99; ages 4 to 8.) This picture book is full of surprises and delights as it tells the story of a little boy who, dazzled by the sight of mermaids on a subway train, goes home to play dress up - and later attends the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Library Journal Review
One of Australia's greatest authors, two-time Booker Prize winner Carey -(Oscar and Lucinda; True History of the Kelly Gang) has drawn inspiration from his native country throughout his career, weaving historical and fantastical tales ranging from the 1942 Battle of Brisbane to transporting a glass church from Sydney to Bellingen. Here, he uses the famous Redex Trial, a cross-country car race, to probe the unfurling legacy of colonialism in 1950s Australia. Desperate to acquire his own dealership, Titch Bobs sees both fame and financial windfall in winning the Redex Trial. With wife Irene as his copilot and neighbor -Willie as navigator, he sets off across Australia's unfinished roads and rural landscape. While Titch remains intensely focused on winning the race, Irene and Willie uncover painful personal histories along the way that intertwine with Australia's forgotten people and communities. VERDICT Carey employs both a multivoice narrative and a continent-spanning car race to emulate the disparate voices and fits and starts that comprise Australia's history. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 8/14/17.]-Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.