Post by wheelspinner on Dec 24, 2009 0:08:04 GMT -5
I've been a fan of Peter Carey since Bliss, which is more years ago than I care to admit. I've read all of his fiction, including his short stories, so it's fair to say I'm a fanboy. Add that to my natural inclination to advocate Australian writers, and you might have to treat this review with a wee grain of salt, but I'll strive for objectivity.
At his peak, Carey was a major exponent of a literary style called magic realism: essentially telling a tale that reads like straight realism, but has a plot that includes illogical or fantastical elements. Many of Carey's early novels are in this style, but his later work has tended towards straight realism like Theft: A Love Story.
When I read the reviews of Parrot and Olivier I got the impression that Carey was back onto his earlier ground. That turned out not to be the case; this novel is pretty much a straight historical fiction. Carey has an enthusiasm for Dickens (e.g. Jack Maggs, which is an imagined life story of Magwitch in Australia) and Parrot and Olivier does seem to be another tribute to Dickensian style and characters. The settings include Dartmoor and revolutionary Paris, both redolent of Dickens' work.
This book is Carey's treatise on democracy. Inspired by de Tocqueville, Carey looks at democracy as it flowers in the USA through the eyes of two characters with very different views of the subject. Olivier is a French aristocrat, a victim of the French Revolution and a refugee from the July Revolution. John "Parrot" Larrit is his secretary, an English printer's devil who spent time in the Australian penal colony. Parrot sees democracy as a beacon for the future, where he can finally establish himself in society in a place that he believes his artistic talents merit.
The novel alternates chapters between Olivier and Parrot. This is a pretty cliched and creaky construct, and Carey doesn't do it that well. Sometimes he uses devices like a written letter to bring the exposition up to date, which comes across very slap-dash. It's a personal preference, but this kind of exposition annoys me; I feel like I'm reading a tennis match.
In the character of Parrot, Carey draws a picture of a frustrated artist who is surrounded by people of greater talent than his, or at least greater application. He despises Olivier yet forms a strong bond with him over the years. Olivier in turn learns to treat Parrot as an equal rather than a dogsbody, something that the American ethos initially forces on him, but he later comes to naturally.
Olivier's status as a French noble opens doors for him even in a supposedly egalitarian society, and the two soon find themselves living with a wealthy American family, the daughter of whom clearly has ambitions of marrying into the French aristocracy. While Olivier wrestles with the notion of marrying a woman his family would never accept and embracing the New World and its rough-and-tumble democracy, his sweetheart dreams of the salons and streets of Paris.
American democratic process horrifies Olivier at the outset, but he comes to see them as superior to the French version, because there is no bloodshed in its wake. He still righteously points out that the American way takes too long to decide anything at all, focuses on the trivial and will lead to the election of the least distinguished to high office, at the expense of the elite and the intelligentsia. If such comments are Carey's attempt to critique current American democracy, they are a bit obvious and clumsy. It is better not to look for Carey's message and focus on his plot.
The plot has elements of Illywhacker and Oscar and Lucinda, but lacks the creative vision of those two great works. It proceeds at a rattling good pace but there are not really a lot of surprises. The ending suggested a bit of a plot twist to me, but ithers have nt read it that way, so maybe I was over-interpreting.
I'm a Carey completist, so I'm always going to read him. This is not one of his greatest works, but Parrot and Olivier is a big sweeping story, and certainly one of Carey's better efforts. It is a new novel by one of the most-awarded novelists writing in English; one of only two authors to have won the Booker twice. In that light, you really can't go wrong.
At his peak, Carey was a major exponent of a literary style called magic realism: essentially telling a tale that reads like straight realism, but has a plot that includes illogical or fantastical elements. Many of Carey's early novels are in this style, but his later work has tended towards straight realism like Theft: A Love Story.
When I read the reviews of Parrot and Olivier I got the impression that Carey was back onto his earlier ground. That turned out not to be the case; this novel is pretty much a straight historical fiction. Carey has an enthusiasm for Dickens (e.g. Jack Maggs, which is an imagined life story of Magwitch in Australia) and Parrot and Olivier does seem to be another tribute to Dickensian style and characters. The settings include Dartmoor and revolutionary Paris, both redolent of Dickens' work.
This book is Carey's treatise on democracy. Inspired by de Tocqueville, Carey looks at democracy as it flowers in the USA through the eyes of two characters with very different views of the subject. Olivier is a French aristocrat, a victim of the French Revolution and a refugee from the July Revolution. John "Parrot" Larrit is his secretary, an English printer's devil who spent time in the Australian penal colony. Parrot sees democracy as a beacon for the future, where he can finally establish himself in society in a place that he believes his artistic talents merit.
The novel alternates chapters between Olivier and Parrot. This is a pretty cliched and creaky construct, and Carey doesn't do it that well. Sometimes he uses devices like a written letter to bring the exposition up to date, which comes across very slap-dash. It's a personal preference, but this kind of exposition annoys me; I feel like I'm reading a tennis match.
In the character of Parrot, Carey draws a picture of a frustrated artist who is surrounded by people of greater talent than his, or at least greater application. He despises Olivier yet forms a strong bond with him over the years. Olivier in turn learns to treat Parrot as an equal rather than a dogsbody, something that the American ethos initially forces on him, but he later comes to naturally.
Olivier's status as a French noble opens doors for him even in a supposedly egalitarian society, and the two soon find themselves living with a wealthy American family, the daughter of whom clearly has ambitions of marrying into the French aristocracy. While Olivier wrestles with the notion of marrying a woman his family would never accept and embracing the New World and its rough-and-tumble democracy, his sweetheart dreams of the salons and streets of Paris.
American democratic process horrifies Olivier at the outset, but he comes to see them as superior to the French version, because there is no bloodshed in its wake. He still righteously points out that the American way takes too long to decide anything at all, focuses on the trivial and will lead to the election of the least distinguished to high office, at the expense of the elite and the intelligentsia. If such comments are Carey's attempt to critique current American democracy, they are a bit obvious and clumsy. It is better not to look for Carey's message and focus on his plot.
The plot has elements of Illywhacker and Oscar and Lucinda, but lacks the creative vision of those two great works. It proceeds at a rattling good pace but there are not really a lot of surprises. The ending suggested a bit of a plot twist to me, but ithers have nt read it that way, so maybe I was over-interpreting.
I'm a Carey completist, so I'm always going to read him. This is not one of his greatest works, but Parrot and Olivier is a big sweeping story, and certainly one of Carey's better efforts. It is a new novel by one of the most-awarded novelists writing in English; one of only two authors to have won the Booker twice. In that light, you really can't go wrong.