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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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His
Illegal Self by Peter Carey |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Outlaw On
one level, Peter Carey’s new novel, His
Illegal Self, is the story of a boy who is loved. The boy is
seven-year-old Che Selkirk, who is loved and cared for by his grandmother on
New York’s Upper East Side. His parents went on the run (perhaps the Weather
Underground) when Che was a toddler, and he hasn’t seen them since. A woman
named Dial leaves her job at Vassar and takes Che from his apartment, first
to his mother in Philadelphia, then to his father on the West Coast, and
eventually to Australia, where they hide out in a hippie commune. Everyone
extends love to Che. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 3, pp.
16-17: Except for one single
photograph, the boy had never seen his dad, not even on TV. There had been no
television permitted in Grandma's house on Kenoza Lake, so after he had helped
light the fires in fall the boy picked among the high musty shelves of
paperbacks—some words as plain as pebbles, many more that held their secrets
like the crunchy bodies of wasps or grasshoppers. He could read some, as he
liked to say. Upstairs there was a proper library with a sliding ladder and
heavy books containing engravings of fish and elk and small flowers with
German names which made him sad. On the big torn sofas where he peered into
these treasures, there was likely to be an abandoned Kipling or Rider Haggard
or Robert Louis Stevenson which his grandma would continue with at dusk. In
this silky water-stained room with its slatted squinting views across the
lake, there was a big glowing valve radio which played only static and a
wailing oscillating electric cry, some deep and secret sadness he imagined
coming from beneath the choppy water slapping at the dock below. Down
in the city, at the Belvedere, there was a pink GE portable TV which always
sat on the marble kitchen countertop; once, when he thought his grandma was
napping, he plugged it in. This was the only time she hurt him, twisting his
arm and holding his chin so he could not escape her eyes. She spit, she was
so crazy—he must not watch TV Not ever. Her given reason was as tangled
as old nylon line, snagged with hooks and spinners and white oxidized lead
weights, but the true reason he was not allowed to watch was straight and
short and he learned it from Gladys the Haitian maid—you don't be getting
yourself upset seeing your mommy and daddy in the hands of the po-lees. You
never do forget a thing like that. Cameron. Fox was the son of the
art dealers in 5D. He had been expelled from Groton on
account of the hair he would not cut, maybe something else as well. Grandma
paid Cameron to be a babysitter. She had no idea. It was in Cameron's room the
boy saw the poster of Che Guevara and learned who he was and why he had no
mother and father. Not even Gladys was going to tell him this stuff. After
his mother and the Dobbs Street Cell had robbed the bank in Bronxville, a
judge had given Che to the permanent care of his grandma. That's what Cameron
said. You got a right to know, man. Cameron was sixteen. He said, Your
grandpa threw a Buddha out the D line window. A fucking Buddha, man. He's a cool
old guy. I smelled him smoking weed out on the stairs. Do you get to hang out
with him? No chance. No way. The one time
they found Grandpa and the Poison Dwarf at Sixty-second Street, the boy and
his grandma went to the Carlyle. Cameron told the boy he was a
political prisoner locked up at Kenoza Lake. His grandma made him play ludo
which was a game from, like, a century before. Cameron gave him a full-page
picture of his father from Life. Cameron read him the caption. Beyond
your command. His dad was cool looking, with wild fair hair. He
held his fingers
in a V. He looks like you, said Cameron Fox.
You should get
this framed, he said. Your father is a great American. Carey’s
prose is always finely written, and his visual narration provides clear description.
He’s best at character insight, and throughout His
Illegal Self, we fell the pulls and tugs of love and longing, made all
the more compelling by the outlaw and fugitive experience. Steve
Hopkins, May 15, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the June 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/His Illegal Self.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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