At our February 2021 group meeting we read books by the Australian-born author Peter Carey.

This website gives much information about each of his books: the story, jackets, reviews and video and TV footage: http://petercareybooks.com/all-titles/

We collectively read these books:

Bliss (1981)
Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
The Tax Collector (1991)
True History of the Kelly Gang (2001)
My Life as a Fake (2003)
Theft: A Love Story (2006)
His Illegal Self (2008)
The Chemistry of Tears (2012)
Amnesia (2014)
A Long way from Home (2017)

We all agreed that overall Peter Carey is a great story-teller and many of his books are page-turners. He delights in giving details on history and the landscape, being described as a wordsmith. Here is a quote from ‘Theft: a love story” – In New York, ‘while the web of fire escapes was weaving a last lovely filigree of light across the factories faces’. The flip side of this is that at times the writing is undisciplined with the plot being convoluted. His characters are larger than life, with the Australian character sometimes being overdrawn and caricatures, from the distance of New York where Carey lives. His characters are not always nice people. They are often the archetypal character of the outsider – the dirty, unkempt, living on the edges of small town Australia.

But well worth a read! And most of his books are in the Hamilton Library