His Illegal Self (Vintage International)
by Peter Carey
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter CareyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-10
ISBN: 030727649X
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of His Illegal Self (Vintage International)
Book Review: Lessons from the Outback
Summary: 5 Stars
It is 1972. Almost-eight-year-old Che Selkirk has been brought up as an orphan prince, living with his rich grandmother in a Park Avenue apartment and on a private lake in New York State. He does not remember either of his parents, founders of a Weathermen-like group at Harvard, now hiding from the law. So when a young woman appears at the door and his grandmother allows him to go with her, Che assumes that this is his mother. As virtually all other reviewers have found, it is impossible to write further without revealing that the woman, known as Dial, is merely an escort. Carey teases the reader with entrancing skill over the first sixty pages, but never mind; he has plenty more tricks up his sleeve.
Unfortunately, things go badly wrong, and Dial ends up with Che in Australia, fleeing to the semi-tropical outback of Queensland. Carey plunges us into the outback setting with remarkable speed; the disorientation is almost as great for us as for the characters. He will fill in the pieces later, but the first encounter with the inhospitable environment is powerful. This is not virgin territory, but semi-wild tracts reached by half-hidden dirt roads where a loose community of hippies have found refuge in tumble-down shacks. Coming to terms with their neighbors, at least for Dial, is as much of a challenge as taming the bush. One of the many things that Carey does so well is balancing the human with the environmental aspects. Dial, an academic about to take up an appointment at Vassar, is an unlikely pioneer, and comes from a very different background to Che, yet both adapt to the place and to one another. I found myself exhilarated by the adventure parts of the story, while being deeply moved by the way in which Dial, Che, and eventually one of the Australians forge deep emotional bonds, showing that families are made of more than blood. For me, this is Carey's richest and most satisfying book yet.
I have been fascinated by the roles played by the outback in Australian literature: a refuge, a challenge, or a vehicle for redemption. All these are found in what might be the greatest of Australian novels, VOSS by Patrick White, but Carey is almost as fine. As a literary tradition, this is older and broader still: think Shakespeare's use of the forests in AS YOU LIKE IT or A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM; think ROBINSON CRUSOE; and (with other small boys but a much uglier twist) think Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES. But what makes the book special for me is the analogy between the physical and metaphorical wilderness. Curiously, an outback hippie commune also features in another recent Australian novel, Joan London's THE GOOD PARENTS, which suggests that the movement had a special intensity down under. But I was equally fascinated by the glimpses of student radical groups such as the Weathermen, whose wilderness is not so much a libertarian escape from the law as a challenge to it. I have been intrigued by echoes of this time in books such as THE DARLING by Russell Banks or THE LAST OF HER KIND by Sigrid Nunez; HIS ILLEGAL SELF goes yet further in filling out this picture, among its many, many other joys.
Summary of His Illegal Self (Vintage International)
Seven-year-old Che Selkirk was raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother. The son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties, Che has grown up with the hope that one day his parents will come back for him. So when a woman arrives at his front door and whisks him away to the jungles of Queensland, he is confronted with the most important questions of his life: Who is his real mother? Did he know his real father? And if all he suspects is true, what should he do? In this artful tale of a young boy's journey, His Illegal Self lifts your spirit in the most unexpected way.World Literature Books
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