NUMBER: 85

Genre: Fiction; Origin: Australia; Pages: 300

Satisfaction rating: 6.5

His Illegal Self is the story of Che — raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, he is the precocious son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties. Yearning for his famous outlaw parents, denied all access to television and the news, he takes hope from his long-haired teenage neighbor, who predicts, ‘They will come for you, man. They’ll break you out of here’.

Soon Che too is an outlaw: fleeing down subways, abandoning seedy motels at night, he is pitched into a journey that leads him to a hippie commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland. Here he slowly, bravely confronts his life, learning that nothing is what it seems. Who is his real mother? Was that his real father? If all he suspects is true, what should he do?

MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:

I just don’t know about this book. Its greatest feature is the language and structure employed by Carey. Often confusing, the plot is unveiled slowly with swapping third-person perspectives between the boy and his captor. I found this bouncing around in time and perspective to be absorbing, almost liking ironing a shirt: you flatten some, then as the iron moves onto a new section of the shirt it traces again over the initial section, flattening it further. This retracing of steps by Che and Dail resulted in a beautiful flow, a slow release of understanding to the true nature of the events unfolding. In fact, I think this book shows a great alternative approach to a similar technique used in Carey’s Theft.

My problem is not that plausibility of the story. I think it would have benefited from another hundred or so pages to flesh out Dial, the boy’s captor. I feel that while the reader if offered great insights to the motivations of the boy, Trevor and the grandmother there is something lacking about Dial. I just found myself questioning her relationship with the boy’s family, something alluded to at times but remained quite a mystery.

Maybe that’s the point, there is a mystery in lots of actions and maybe being a radical activist is enough. But in fact, the politics was of secondary interest to me, it was the relationship between Che and Dial that offered real rewards. After all, this book is not a thriller. All up, good not great.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

Read more on the Peter Carey site

Last Modified :June 27th, 2008 Filed under : The Log: novels Navigate : Previous post / Next post