Customer Reviews

His Illegal Self

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This novel has a lot to recommend it: original, compelling, descriptive writing, a unique plot, and characters that are distinctive and memorable.

But in the midst of the story, there's a gap -- one that was too difficult for this reader to navigate. We are to believe that "the mother" -- aka Anna Xenos -- who is on the cusp of academic success decides to take a huge risk in bringing Che, the young boy, to visit his birth mother. But why? The motivation is never explored. She is treated as a peripheral member of the underground, as an inferior being by the boy's grandmother, and in essence, seems to have moved on from the passions of college years. Why risk it all without an internal motivation? And why go to Australia when there are certainly many countries (Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica) that are closer and also provide anonymity?

Carey is far better in his lush descriptions of nature in the communes of Australia. He devotes page after page painting a fine portrait of the wild natural beauty of the land. What I wanted him to do was spend equal time in descriptions of the inner life of Anna; for that, there were broad strokes. He does do that admirably for Che; it's difficult to create a plausible child who is not too cloying or too mature or too naive. Che is none of these things; he is truly an original.

In short, this is a fine book with some flaws that make it less than an extraordinary one.

For the portion of the United States population under the age of 30 or so, the anti-war activism of the 1960s and '70s probably seems as remote as some obscure medieval conflict. In recent novels like Dana Spiotta's EAT THE DOCUMENT and Neil Gordon's THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, talented authors have given us glimpses of that era in the form of middle-aged fugitive radicals who surface in the present and now must come to terms with the consequences of their youthful actions. Now, two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey thrusts us into the heart of the era, with the profound and moving story of a young boy and his protector forced to face those circumstances in real time.

The year is 1972, the end of the Vietnam War almost three years away and Richard Nixon, the President first elected on a cynical promise to end it, on the verge of re-election. Seven-year-old Ché David Selkirk, under the care of his maternal grandmother after his radical activist parents are arrested following a violent demonstration, divides his time between a luxury apartment on New York's Upper East Side and a rustic lakeside retreat in upstate New York. His privileged, sheltered life changes abruptly when a woman by the name of Anna Xenos, known only to Ché as "Dial," takes him one afternoon for what his grandmother believes is a brief, clandestine reunion with his mother. Instead, the outing turns into a trip across the United States, shepherded and financed by members of "the Movement," from bus station to safehouse to motel and ultimately to Queensland, Australia. Ché aches to be reunited with his parents and fantasizes about the possibility that Dial, an English professor and friend of his mother, may even be her.

Ché and Dial eventually land in a commune known as the Crystal Community, where Dial has purchased 14 acres of desolate ground populated by a handful of ramshackle structures and a group of equally dubious inhabitants. Undermining the prototypical "peace and love" ideology of the time, the "hippies" are as suspicious and unwelcoming as any middle-class suburbanites, even going so far as to demand Ché and Dial rid themselves of Che's kitten, Buck. In this environment, Carey sketches with painstaking tenderness and care the emotionally complex relationship between Dial and Ché --- sometimes warm and more often tense and challenging --- that's at the heart of the novel.

At the commune, Ché is befriended by Trevor Dobbs ("a strong man, sleek as a porpoise, sheathed in a good half-inch-thick coat of fat which seemed to feed his brown, taut skin, giving it a healthy fish-oil kind of shine"), a tough and oddly compassionate character who becomes a father figure, teaching him skills that will enable him to survive in the bush and imparting both his rugged values and his barely contained paranoia about those in authority.

The success of HIS ILLEGAL SELF rests on two pillars: Carey's acute insight into the mind of Ché, and the consistent lyricism of writing that gives life to the harsh beauty of the Australian landscape. Of the boy, finishing a gardening project for Trevor that conjures up memories of lakeside summers with his grandmother, he writes: "Then he did cry, secretly, mourning everything he lost, all the cold empty hollows, the marrow stolen from his bones." And, in one of the countless arresting examples of his keenly observant prose, the author pictures for us "the inky green of rain forest where arm-thick vines wound around trees with skins like elephants. Beyond the hut, behind the car, the lonely darkness was bleeding along the course of Remus Creek and washing up into the muggy hills."

When Trevor and Dial enlist an Australian lawyer of questionable competence in a plan to return Ché to his grandmother, the life they've been living in the rugged wilderness begins to unravel. As befits a novel of this maturity and power, HIS ILLEGAL SELF doesn't falter by trying to bring the story to a close in any kind of tidy fashion. The ending is as fitting as it is startling, all the more satisfying because of the careful craftsmanship that leads up to it.

In an interview on the occasion of the publication of his last novel, Carey said that he's motivated by "the thought that one might actually make something very beautiful, that had never existed before." By that standard he has more than satisfied his goal in this rich and complex work.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg (mwn52@aol.com)

Anna Xenos, a.k.a. Dial, was supposed to perform a simple task -- deliver a 7-year-old boy named Che (but called Jay by his guardian/grandmother) to her old friend in hiding, his mother. Why is Che's mum hiding, you ask? A Weatherman. SDS, you see. Think 60's. Think hippies. Think things going terribly wrong on the way to Che's Mommy, Susan Selkirk. And the next thing you know, a simple escorting favor for an old friend turns into a full-blown kidnapping, landing the hapless Dial and the excitedly bewildered Che in the Land Down Under (Carey's home turf).

The book contained some beautiful excerpts and turns of phrase. At times, in fact, I stopped and reread odd but compelling lines like "Trevor turned and saw Dial running at him, her yellow hair rising in snaky waves, her titties like puppies fighting inside her shirt." It's clear you are in the hands of a real "writer's writer," a man whose poetic license will never expire.

But alas, there were problems, too. For one, Carey hitched his star to that scourge of modern writers', dialogue without quotation marks. Ignoring this convention means readers often have to reread NOT because they want to savor a beautiful expression, but because they are unsure about who is talking. Also, once the book hits the badlands of Oz, it mucks down a bit. Carey's staccato sentences and short, punchy paragraphs go on and on, deep as the verdant landscape he describes. We see how a 60's-style commune operates in Australia, we meet some organic consumers unlike the kind you find pushing carts in Whole Foods, and -- like it or no -- you get to know Trevor, the feral grown-up orphan who both attracts and repels Dial and Che. Meantime, the game is up on Dial playing Mom. The boy learns more and more. Trevor gardens. Dial mopes. The boy wanders. The hippie neighbors look on distrustfully at the Ugly American. After starting out a plot book, the narrative evolves into a character-driven one. Not all readers will handle the transformation well.

Ultimately, Carey carries the day and in the end, Dial sets the tone with a dramatic denouement featuring a most surprising twist. Well, not totally surprising, but more unexpected than not. Yes, you may lose threads of dialogue along the way, and yes, you may not like a lot of the sad sacks you meet in the Land of Oz, but you must acknowledge that Carey is a talented writer. My Ambivalent Self gives Carey 3.5 stars, but I'm certain that fans of previous Carey novels, as well as readers who find desultory narratives dwelling on character fascinating, will find it a 4 or 5. If, on the other hand, you're convinced you would object to a fast start that stops to mosey around a bit, you might do better with the next book in your to-be-read pile. Know thyself, then, before considering this book.

I liked this book very much but had to stop reading at different points because I was so anxious about the fate of the main character, a boy named Che. When the novel is told in his voice it is very powerful and moving. The Queensland environment is brilliantly evoked - as is the climate of the sixties, or any time when young people reject the values with which they were raised and forge a revolution. The book is both nostalgic and disturbing, sweet and sad.

Each chapter is a jigsaw puzzle piece and when put together, the portrait is complex, engaging, terrifying, and ultimately satisfying. There is a challenge to the narrative, like Carey expects the reader to fill in the blanks, and thus brings him into the story actively. A sense of palpable dread hangs over the entire affair as the reader invests emotionally into the fate of the mother (who is no mother) and the son. This is a terrific, fierce novel.

Technically speaking, it is a well written book. But the story itself fails to satisfy. The plot is very contrived, even improbable, and too much of it takes place in the wilderness of the Australian outback where not too much is going on. Now, if you want to get involved in the daily life of an Australian hippie commune with all its pettiness, this book is for you.

HIS ILLEGAL SELF (HIS) is my fifth Peter Carey novel. (The others were Jack Maggs: A Novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, My Life as a Fake, and Theft. They're all terrific.) While the stories in these five novels are very different, the narratives are alike in one respect: Carey establishes his stories quickly; then, his narratives become totally engrossing sprints. While the novels are spotted with wonderful metaphors and lyricism, they mostly have great pace. They are riveting rushes--like the beautiful Australian bird in HIS that Carey captures jetting over a remote stream. There is little navel gazing in these novels.

Another element in some of Carey's books is the offbeat, somewhat quirky, dynamic of his narratives. To make my point, think of Philip Roth, sort of Carey's narrative opposite, who brings the awesome power of his analysis to the subjects of aging in Everyman or the relation of the ill and elderly to youth in Exit Ghost. In those books, Roth takes common experiences head on. But Carey? Well, he finds a twist so that the situation he explores does not require power so much as narrative talent. Carey's approach to the familiar is subtle.

In HIS, Carey's starting point is SDS in New York in the early 1970s. Basically, a young woman and associate professor, Dial, without any malice aforethought, goes underground with a boy, Che, whose mother is SDS and whose grandmother lives on Park Avenue. Gradually, Carey unfolds this story so that what appears like a capricious disaster--the abduction of the boy--makes perfect sense. Then, the climax of the novel turns on an element in Dial's character, which emerges with angry clarity in a final conversation with Che's grandmother. It's a fascinating story, told like a mystery, that comes together with logic and power in the final few pages. Bravo Peter!

Of course, the dynamic driving some of Peter Carey's novels is not quirky at all. For example, it's easy to get the story of Ned Kelly, growing up poor and despised Irish in Australia. It's easy to get the story of the Boone brothers in Theft, since the action is driven by love and ambition. But HIS is one of Carey's subtler books and this reader had to mull its issues when finished. Then, I got it. HIS is Carey's take on something we all understand: Fool for Love.

For somebody who grew up in the sixties, I found this novel to be very interesting. Yet, I have to admit I was a bit confused in the first chapter. I found myself rereading scenes, struggling to understand whether or not the girl was in fact Che (the boy's) mother, or not. The individual scenes are fascinating, and I was very interested in watching the relationship between Dial and the boy evolve, however vague. I would have liked a little more help from the writer in terms of better defining the relationships. I am a Carey fan, and I loved Theft - this one not so much, but I'll be looking for his next one.

In Peter Carey's new novel His Illegal Self, the child, a seven year old called Che is not only a willing party to abduction, he's actually been waiting for it.

"They will come for you, man. They'll break you out of here"

his neighbour predicts, referring to the boy's parents, famous student radicals on the run from the FBI.

When Dial arrives one day at the apartment Che shares with his grandmother in New Yorks Upper East Side, he recognises her immediately, and soon the pair are on the run from the law and with financial and, with tactical help from the activists, eventually skip the country and find themselves on the run in Australia. Is she his real mother though?

Now I must confess that I found myself frequently scratching my head in the first part of this book, struggling to find out exactly what was happening. I felt as if I were watching a film through frosted class - I couldn't quite get the picture into focus and I felt distanced. Most of the pieces do fall into place later in the novel, but still there is still a need to suspend a fair old bit of disbelief.

For me the book really began to pull together once the pair move into a hut in the inhospitable Queensland wilds, and find themselves part of an equally inhospitable hippy community (based on a commune Carey had once been part of) guaranteed to knock any residual nostalgia for the good old '60's and 70's firmly on the head.

(I must add a note here while I remember that I am thinking of founding a society for the prevention of cruelty to fictional animals, because the incident with the cat was totally uncalled for, I thought.)

The great strength of the book is in Carey's ability to create characters we can fully believe in and want to root for. His portrait of the watchful, needy Che is pitch perfect. We sympathise deeply with Dial, torn between regret for opportunities lost (she was due to start a new career as a college when she found herself drawn into her friend's mess) and her fierce love for Che whom she took care of for a time when he was a baby. The narrative is told at times from her perspective, at times from his, and I very much like the way that sometimes the same event (most notably the actual abduction) is viewed through both sets of eyes to show the differences in the child's and the adult's perception.

There's also Trevor, their neighbour in the commune is just the kind of wily rascal that Carey excels at creating, who gradually assumes the role of a father figure to Che and lover to Dial.

It's a sort of modern adage that there are two kinds of families, those we are born into, and those we struggle to create. In his novels, Carey frequently draws characters who are in some sense orphaned as these three are. The love that grows gradually between them is earthy and real. So real in fact that I wanted to spin the last few chapters of the book out for as long as possible, though when I got there, the life-affirming ending had me cheering.

So in the end, yes, I was a satisfied reader, although I didn't feel as strongly for the book as I have done for most of Carey's other novels, notably The True History of the Kelly Gang, and Theft.

Carey has done a superb job of presenting the harrowing experience of a young boy who is forced to travel from the safety of his grandmother's cushy digs in NYC to the scary and foreign world of Australia's underground with a woman he thinks he knows. Seen through the innocent, trusting eyes of a child, there is a ring of truth in every scene. The overuse of similes (some cringe worthy)is a distraction, and the title is certainly not memorable; nevertheless, Carey's beautifully crafted story and memorable characters - Dial, Trevor, and Che - stay with the reader long after the last page is read.