Customer Reviews

Bliss

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's hard to surprise anyone who has read extensively -- the plot is usually predictable, the outcome clear, and the path hackneyed.

This Carey guy has renewed my faith in the English language. I thought before starting that Harry Joy would have a heartattack, decide he was in Hell, then wander around for 300 pages before finally saying, "Oops, I was wrong."

I had no idea where this book was going until it got there, and on the way it was funny, insightful, vivid, with likeable and hateable characters populating an insane but real world.

It's too bad he's so unknown, this guy can write.

Bliss is a lively, entertaining, and thought-provoking seriocomic novel, and Peter Carey is a terrifically amusing writer with a great ear for dialogue, a wry humor, and a broad vision. He delights in poking fun of us and our foibles, while saving his barbs for corporations and institutions. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Bliss, I know I would have enjoyed it even more, and maybe even loved it, when it was published in 1981. I feel Bliss to be just a bit dated now--still well worth reading and lots of fun, with many extremely funny scenes--but less relevant with its environmental messages and its anti-Big Business needling than it must have been when these messages were fresh, new, and more importantly, uncommon. As it was, Carey's approach now feels a bit patronizing at times and the environmental message, just a bit didactic--and old.

The book opens with Harry Joy, an advertising executive, having an out-of-body experience as he "dies" from a heart attack. When he comes back to life, he is convinced that he is in Hell. Since his wife is having an affair with his business partner, his son is selling drugs, and his daughter is a sexually precocious junkie, it is easy to see why Harry is convinced that his life is Hell and why he feels a captive to it. As he seeks enlightenment, Harry recognizes that Krappe Chemicals, a client, is polluting the environment with cancer-causing fumes, sees a cancer map showing the rates of cancer near industrial polluters, and meets Honey Barbara, an environmentally conscious prostitute with a heart of green.

Carey's satire here also includes the vagaries of religious doctrine, the absurdities of police procedure, the abuses of the mental health "industry" and its institutions, the fear of Communist conspiracies, and even of the trustee selection process for the State Gallery, which draws from "the very inner circle of society." It is lots of fun to read, with some laugh-out-loud funny scenes, but its thematic punch seems to have dulled a bit over time.

At the beginning of this quirky and original tale, Harry Joy thinks he has it all. He is proud of his children, has a successful career, is still in love with his beautiful and intelligent wife, is best friends with his boss. Then, he has a heart attack, and has one of those near-death out of body experiences where he approaches a zone of complete bliss, and a zone of complete horror. During his recovery, he becomes convinced that he truly is dead, and that he is in that zone of complete horror, indeed in hell. Suspecting this, he begins to find evidence that he is right! After one of the worst of the revelations, he has an interlude with a young woman who lives an alternate lifestyle in a much more remote area. He falls in love with Honey Barbara, and his life begins to change. And then Harry Joy begins a struggle to truly change his entire life and self, and finally attain complete bliss. This is a silly/sad/sweet story filled with surprises, human frailty, and poetic beauty. It is a story to become a lasting favorite. And, surprise of surprises, the movie matches the book

I was initially drawn by the overall theme of the book - a man is brought back to life from a heart attack and is convinced that he has in fact died and gone to hell. I found this precept interesting enough to start me reading the book, and watching the protagonist sorting people into "Actors", "Captives", and "Those In Charge" is delightful. In the end, this original groundwork is remembered from time to time, but falls by the wayside as Harry Joy continues through his life. I was surprised that this distraction from the original concept (which is what drew me to the novel) did not disappoint me. The book was inteligent, witty, and dry. With a sharp eye for detail and dialogue, Peter Carey made for an enjoyable read.

In "Bliss" we get a character study of a man named Harry Joy, who we join mid-cardiac arrest. He subsequently recovers, but thinks he has died and gone to hell. It's a great premise, and the book's opening is brilliantly entertaining. Unfortunately, for me at least, the balance of the book never quite lives up to the promise glimpsed in the opening pages. Harry is an occasionally adulterous ad man married to an occasionally unfaithful wife who herself yearns to be in advertising, and who utlimately contrives to join him in the business. By the time she does she is ensconced in a relationship with Harry's other business partner, Joel, who lives with her (and Harry, and their kids) in the Joy household, while Harry himself has fallen in love with a drug-running bush woman named Honey Barbara, who also moves into the household. While the book's focus is predominantly on Harry, it concerns itself with the conflicting relationships of these four people, with some secondary story lines revolving around the Joy children. Midway through the book I thought the story line became almost oppressingly obtuse, and hardly deserving of its billing as a dark comedy. In fact, I found it to be barely comic at all. Some of Carey's other work ("The Fat Man In History" and "Illywhacker" in particular) is much funnier and more substantial. If you're a big Peter Carey fan, you'll want to read this to round out your exposure to his body of work. If not, I'd skip "Bliss" and read some of his later books, such as "Illywhacker" and "Oscar and Lucinda."

Harry Joy is much like someone we all probably know. A regular guy, a successful businessman, husband, and father. But after suffering a heart attack he transforms into someone much more interesting. He is rescusitated, but convinced he is in hell.
Don't read this and think you know where this story is going, there isn't anything that can prepare you for the rest of this brilliant, quirky, dark, hilarious story. Harry is surrounded by a cast of characters who are not necessarily likeable, but complex and interesting. We get to know his wife, his children, his business partner, and some new friends as well as Harry gets to know people as they really are, and not as he thought they were. This is a funny story, told in a serious way. Pay attention and you will laugh out loud. Highly recommended, Peter Carey is a brilliant writer.

Peter Careys' book 'Bliss' is a pure poetry (and in places almost reads like it). If you ever see it in a book store, just pick it up and read the last page to get an idea of the artistry of this man. Harry Joy has had a heart attack and experienced several minutes of clinical death. As he recovers, he begins to doubt that he came back to life at all and Harry takes a long, hard look at his life, family, friends and job.

This book is well worth the purchase price for the entertainment value. With an original plot and multi-demensional characters, this book holds the readers attention through its many twists and turns. In the beginning, Harry Joy has a seemingly ideal life when he has a near death experience. Everything, it turns out, was an illusion. Now he is in Hell, or so he thinks. On his way to an eventual true happy life in a setting the Harry Joy at the beginning of the tale would have never dreamed, Carey has some good comments on how we arrange our lives and how we deal with other people. This is the first work of Mr. Carey's that I have read. Based on this book, I will read more.

What lies outside the confines of the rat-race? In "Bliss' Peter Carey explores the life that exists outsides the confines of structured reality. Harry Joy experiences a state of bliss on suffering a heart attack but on recovery must reconcile himself to a repugnant world devoid of caring or morality. Or does he? His character yearns for a more sprititual existence as exemplified by Honey Barbara a hippy from one would presume Northern NSW or Queensland. His eventual attainment of this lifestyle provides a fitting end to this novel.

I picked this book up on recommendation by a book seller. It was the first book I've read by Peter Carey. While I found Carey's use of language fascinating (I have not read much Australian literature which may have increased my interest), the story failed to satisfy. I felt that Carey abandoned the gloom and doom of Harry's "Hell" as the story drew to a close in order to give the character the sense of bliss and heaven on which the book's themes revolve. While I appreciate the stab at finality, the ease with which Harry transitions to a bush lifestyle and forsakes his urban past is unbelievable particularly in light of torment and obstacles he is confronted with up to this point.

Following a good verses evil dichotomy throughout the book, Carey proposed that abandonment of the urban (evil) for the rural (good) is the path to happiness. Even if I had read this book at the time of its release in the 1980's, this structure would still have rendered the tale naive. Carey delves into the complex means with which modern society corrupts imperceptibly through the media's perpetuation of ideology and then offers an over simplified solution to the problem. It does not ring true.

I was also disappointed that Harry's daughter Lucy was not a more developed character. Carey's makes her character highly intriguing but then fails to fully flush her out.

This is definitely a worth while read despite its flaws and I will certainly explore more of Carey work. I only hope that his later books are more carefully constructed.