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A Long Way from Home is a beautiful novel written by the famous author Peter Carey. The book is perfect for those who wants to read historical, historical fiction books. A Long Way from Home pdf book was awarded with Australian Book Industry Award Nominee for Literary Fiction , Walter Scott Prize Nominee for Longlist .
My point is, I'm bringing back the 1-star reviews. Hi, so I was willing to read a book featuring aboriginal characters, and I wanted to know if this book had them or if it only talked about Australia's cultural past metaphorically? That cover is based off a historical picture of one of the cars during a Redex Trial race. And I reckon that glorious final sentence will go down as one of the finest endings in Australian literature. It’s my usual practice to cite other reviews to complement mine, but I can’t find one that doesn’t reveal a major spoiler.
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I read an interview with Carey recently where he was asked why he decided that after 14 books the time was right to explore Aboriginal culture and the white man’s rewriting of Australian history. Every once in a while there was some tidbit that piqued my interest and kept me from giving up on it, but I wasn't crazy about the writing style, pace or tone of the book. I was also sometimes flummoxed by Australian expressions. I think the author had good intentions but perhaps he is not the right person to tackle the history of the cruel and racist treatment of the Aborigines in Australia.
Cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket is included for hard covers. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. May be very minimal identifying marks on the inside cover.
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The two stories never really meshed well, and by the end they wander off in their own directions. I found the final third of the book the most interesting, but the ending itself suggests to me that Carey didn't know where he was going with his own story. There are lots of interesting facts here, but it doesn't mesh into a coherent narrative. Also I found the magic realistic touches (babies snatched by eagles; an old man appearing as if by magic across long distances) distracted and didn't add to the narrative. I mention these stories by way of a long prelude because Carey's book annoyed me in the way it wrapped up this atrocious part of Australian history in a sort of horrible nostalgic glow .
Even though I found it inexplicable at times, if I let the writing wash over me, hang on and stay the ride, I discovered that I experienced an understanding at a much more elemental and emotional level rather than a logical intellectual one. This is Carey's genius; he is able to elicit this reaction in the reader. His ability to evoke the feel of the outback from the ever-present enveloping dust in the dry to the unrelenting mud in the wet probably had a lot to do with it. I can see what the author was trying to do, and I can say I liked it; however, I think the narrative loses steam when the plot shifts so dramatically. I suggest reading it as representative of Australia’s colonial past, but I am not sure this is going to work well for readers interested in the Redex.
Carey's late style masterpiece; a thrilling high speed story that starts
There are a couple of acclaimed Aussie authors that I have trouble getting into and Peter Carey is one of them. It’s a long, long time since I read Oscar and Lucinda and Illywhacker and I wanted to try another of his books to see if my perspective would change but it didn’t. For a start, it takes ages, around 150 pages, before we get to the meat of the story. I do admire him for tackling Australia’s ‘big issue’ though and give him 3 stars for that.
Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector. It was an entertaining evening — albeit very, very cold (even with the heating on, the church was akin to sitting in a giant refrigerator and after an hour in the pews I could barely feel my feet because they’d turned numb with the cold). He largely spoke about the background behind the novel, which is based on the Redex Australia Trial, a road rally dating from 1953 that circumnavigated Australia and was open to pro and amateur drivers in unmodified cars unsuited to the tough terrain. If you’re thinking that 15% isn’t enough to know if a story is good or not, then I agree.
As we know from his earliest novels, Carey is a genius at quirky characterisation, and Willie Bachhuber is one of his best. Willie is a schoolteacher with a past and present that are equally troubled. To evade paying maintenance for a child he thinks is the fruit of his wife’s adultery, he has fled from his hasty marriage and his own estranged parent, and is batching next door to Irene and Titch in Bacchus Marsh. A mild-mannered man who participates in a weekly radio quiz show , Willie lives an otherwise quiet life with his books and his chooks until (gosh!) he is suspended from his job for hanging an obnoxious student out of a second-storey window.
Peter Carey has used a style here that is reminiscent of painful required readings in school. With first person viewpoints that mix dialogue, thoughts and descriptions all together you have to really pay attention to get the juicy details out. For me, these days, unless I’m instantly drawn into the story I am not interested in putting in the work.
Additional features include a listing of headwords, a Carey history, 44 reading and writing topics, and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources. There is certainly an autobiographical element in the book as Carey grew up in Bacchus Marsh and his parents ran a General Motors Holden dealership. Carey also ventures into indigenous stories and characters for the first time in his writing career. On the Redex trial a massacre site is discovered and a child’s skull is brought into a police station where the local cop labels it ‘Abo infant skull found near xxx’.
His vast knowledge and thorough research really bring the text alive, and also show his sympathy and respect for what so many aborigines have and do endure in what remains one of the most unforgiving and intolerant corners of the English speaking world. Overall, despite being somewhat disjointed, this was an engaging read, which introduced me to a chunk of history and culture of which I was largely unaware. Character is everything in Peter Carey's twisty new novel, "A Long Way From Home", and we are treated to some unique character types; from real jerks, to humorous caricatures, to deeply moving “real” people. This novel — his 14th — is based very much on the Redex Trial and focuses on a trio of eccentric characters that enter the event, before it morphs into an intriguing exploration of a different kind of race — that of white Australia’s crimes against its indigenous population. An absorbing, fearless probing of the 1950s Australian psyche when whitefella post-war optimism ruled and the secrets of the country's dark heart were yet to be openly acknowledged. The unfolding of the novel's central core is masterful - if this doesn't want to make you go back and revisit the entire Carey canon, nothing will.
This is a character-driven novel which takes place in the 1950s Australian small-town life. They were an interesting motley group of personalities, the most prominent being Willie, Irene and Titch. The premise is also interesting.The idea of following these 3 very different people whose lives collide interested me, so I finished the book, but I have to say it didn't really provide a satisfying read.
See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections. I was listening to an interview last night and the interviewer kept saying “you say in the book” and the author responded each time, “no, the narrator says”. This is a thrilling high speed story that starts in one way, and then takes you some place else. It often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always a page-turner, even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves. After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. There are some wonderful moments in this book, and it’s clear that Carey is enjoying a strong period of writing, his last novel, “Amnesia” was filled with some great political and insightful thoughts.
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I didn't know that much about Australian history and all the difficult tensions and conflicts that existed between the indigenous folks and whites, and perhaps my appreciation of the book suffered as a result. The language is also a little difficult, what with the local phraseology and lingo. Maybe I'm just too removed from Australia and its history to appreciate the language and in-depth look at the setting of the various small towns and the Aboriginal history.
Women were expected to conform to a domestic role, and Australia’s Black History was decades away from being being acknowledged. Australia’s enduring love affair with the motor car was taking off because ordinary people could afford to buy one, and the branding of cars was beginning to be linked to male identity. Set in the early 1950s in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, the main characters are Irene and Titch Bobs, a happily married couple who want to be Ford dealers and set up their own car yard but Holden has recently emerged and is challenging Ford for supremacy. Irene and Titch decide to go on the Redex trial, a type of car rally that circumnavigated Australia and was quite popular at that time.
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