The new Kensington & Chelsea Review is out, featuring (on p.23) my review of Peter Carey's new novel, The Chemistry of Tears. You can read the whole magazine here (I've put a transcript of the review below it):
(if that doesn't work go to www.kensingtonandchelseareview.com)
A careful layering of reality and unreality
runs through Peter Carey’s new novel. It mostly takes place in a fictional
museum, but detailed localism and the intrusion of a utilitarian, centre-right
Coalition government seem all-too familiar. Here a fictional object is being
restored: a clockwork automaton of a duck – or swan, depending on which
narrator you believe at which point in the book –based on Vaucanson’s famous
‘digesting duck’ that appeared to eat and defecate. The overall effect is
reminiscent of Angela Carter’: a world so close and vivid as to seem realistic,
but where something unreal always threatens to break the surface.
