Is the endlessly inventive Carey on the Nobel shortlist? He ought to be.
The two-time Booker-winner’s ninth novel is a feisty ironic comedy focused on a failed painter who’d give Joyce Cary’s Gully Jimson a run for his money.
If either of them had any, that is. Peter Carey’s bilious protagonist Michael “Butcher” Boone is the intellectual black sheep of a rowdy Australian clan locally famous for its profession of slaughtering and marketing livestock and its predilection for booze-fueled misbehavior. When Butcher, some time after a prison term handed him for an art-related criminal rampage, considers taking up painting again, his semi-good intentions are foiled by two brazenly unconventional characters. His mentally challenged brother Hugh, a bearlike innocent who speaks an odd gnomic mixture of tearful nonsense and hair-raisingly imaginative naïf poetry, continues to assert urgent claims on his sibling’s reluctant stewardship. Enter Marlene, a succulently sexual mystery woman with family ties to the mistress of legendary Picasso-like renegade painter Jacques Leibovitz. Seducing Butcher is child’s play to this manipulative siren, who gradually involves the agreeably amoral artist in a trip to Japan (for an exhibition which, Marlene promises, will restore his celebrity), duplicitous recreations of canvasses produced by both Leibovitz and his wily mistress, Dominique, and ongoing tussles with the “art police” (specifically, Butcher’s Javert, police detective Amberstreet)—all this in addition to the vague confusions endured by the helpless (though not at all clueless) Hugh. The serpentine plot is a brain-squeezing beauty, cunningly elaborated through the juxtaposed first-person narrations of Butcher and Hugh (a possible nod to Australian master Patrick White’s novel about emotionally conjoined twins, The Solid Mandala). But it’s the author’s mastery of details of artists’ lives and the racy energy of his prose that make this edgy, irreverent, often hilariously profane novel soar. In some ways a successor to Carey’s impudent picaresque Illywhacker (1985), it’s a certifiable hoot.
Is the endlessly inventive Carey on the Nobel shortlist? He ought to be.Pub Date: May 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-26371-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
Another brilliant odyssey from Bouchet.
Tess Bailey and her crew agree to a rescue mission which is practically suicidal, but as they prepare, she discovers deep secrets about her past that may give her and her rebel allies more leverage in their battle for freedom from the Galactic Overseer, though at great cost.
Nightchaser Tess Bailey, her ship, Endeavor, and her rebel crew—which now includes her lover, Shade Ganavan, until recently a Dark Watch bounty hunter—have been given the task of freeing Reena Ahern, a scientist who could save Demeter Terre, a planet that was poisoned by the Galactic Overseer when it stood up to him, killing 90% of its population. Unfortunately, Reena is imprisoned on Starbase 12, “the most secure place in the known universe.” First, though, Tess and Shade have a meeting with her uncle, Nathaniel Bridgebane, second-in-command to the Overseer, during which Tess realizes her uncle is likely an ally. They also meet his lieutenant, Sanaa Mwende, who joins their crew and helps Tess get a clearer picture of the dangerous game her uncle has played all these years. As the crew prepares for their rescue mission, Tess' first love reappears; then the crew agrees to a smaller job liberating some food supplies during a Dark Watch personnel switch and wind up rescuing hundreds of people the Overseer captured for their superblood—which, like Tess', is impervious to disease and heals extremely quickly. The stakes rise as people across the galaxy are about to be tagged and tracked, all in order to find the blood that will be used to create an army of supersoldiers, annihilating any possible rebellion. Help for their mission also leads to more secrets regarding Tess’ past being revealed, setting up more hope and more danger for the next book in the series. The Nightchaser space opera continues with tons of action, romance, pathos, and fascinating worldbuilding.
Another brilliant odyssey from Bouchet.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6716-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.
Once-in-a-lifetime romantic passion and graphically depicted torture sessions are only the two extremes of this lively time-travel romance set in 18th-century Scotland—an imaginative and lighthearted debut by a promising newcomer.
World War II has finally ended and Claire Beauchamp Randall, a British Red Cross nurse, has gone off to Scotland with her historian husband, Frank, to try to resume their married life where it left off six years before. Their diligent attempts to make a baby come to a halt, however, when Claire discovers an ancient stone circle on a nearby hilltop, slips between two mysterious-looking boulders, and is transported willy-nilly to the year 1743. Stumbling down the hillside, disoriented and confused, Claire is discovered by Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall, an evil English officer who happens to be her husband's direct ancestor and physical look-alike. Randall notes Claire's revealing 1940's summer dress, assumes she is a whore, and attempts to rape her, whereupon she is rescued by the fierce MacKenzie clan, who take her to their castle and confine her there. Claire adjusts to her changed circumstances with amazing ease, using her nursing experience to tend to her hosts' illnesses while she impatiently awaits a chance to return to the circle of stones. Before she can get away, circumstances force her into a marriage with James Frazer, a Scottish renegade from English justice and Jonathan Randall's archenemy. Young Jamie's good looks, passion, and virility soon redirect Claire's energies to defending her stalwart new husband against her former mate's evil clone, and the fierce, courageous but historically doomed Scottish clans against the course of destiny itself.
A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-385-30230-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991
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