From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
From the two-time winner of the New Zealand Booker Prize (
Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang) comes an enthralling tale based on a nearly unknown incident in Australia's past that uses gothic trappings to highlight the battle between artistic passion and personal integrity.
When London poetry editor Sarah Wode-Douglass accompanies a rebel writer to Malaysia, she meets the notorious Christopher Chubb, a now-homeless bicycle repairman who concocted a literary hoax in the 1940s that destroyed several lives. Using the pseudonym of "Bob McCorkle," Chubb forced a young female editor to face an obscenity trial that eventually got out of hand and led to her suicide. As if this were not enough, a seven-foot giant claiming to be the real Bob McCorkle appeared out of nowhere and, acting out of revenge against his "creator," kidnapped Chubb's daughter.
Carey weaves a complex, imaginative plot that uses clashing narratives to build conflict and suspense,as mysterious characters confront each other and revelations are disclosed in rapid-fire succession. You'll find yourself waiting impatiently for the eventual throwdown between Chubb and his creation McCorkle, a face-off that will draw all the novel's threads together in a wondrous and thrilling finale. A mesmerizing, innovative work of fiction, My Life as a Fake is as much a thoughtful exploration of conscience as it is a lyrical mystery concerning the creative soul. Tom Piccirilli
The New York Times
Given the amply demonstrated brilliance of its author, My Life as a Fake is also replete with its own poetic echoes and allusions. They work best when the narrative still appears firmly grounded in reality, and when the obtuseness of the poetry-averse can become one of the book's sly delights … My Life as a Fake is serious about art, but Mr. Carey's down-to-earth Australian wryness is also much in evidence. —Janet Maslin
Publishers Weekly
Carey, who won the Man Booker Prize for his True History of the Kelly Gang, takes another strange but much less well-known episode in Australian history as the basis for this hypnotic novel of personal and artistic obsession. He tells it through the eyes of Lady Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of a struggling but prestigious London poetry journal, who one day in the early 1970s finds herself accompanying an old family friend, poet and novelist John Slater, out to Malaysia. There they encounter an eccentric Australian expatriate, Christopher Chubb, who concocted, Slater says, a huge literary hoax in Australia just after the war, creating an imaginary genius poet, Bob McCorkle, whose publication by a little magazine led to the suicide of the magazine's editor. Now Chubb offers Lady Sarah a page of poetry that shows undoubted genius and claims it is from a book in his possession. Lady Sarah's every acquisitive instinct is inflamed, but to get her hands on the book she has to listen, as Chubb inflicts on her, Ancient Mariner-like, the amazing story of his own epic struggle with McCorkle. In the end, the vaunted manuscript is revealed to be in the care of Chubb's fierce daughter (long ago kidnapped and raised by McCorkle) and a deranged Chinese woman. To what lengths will Lady Sarah go to get it, and how will the women keep it from her? The tale is a tour de force, with a positively Graham Greene-ish relish in the seamy side of the tropics, a mix of literary detective story and murderous nightmare that is piquantly hair-raising. And just when it seems that Carey's story is his greatest fantastic creation to date, he lets on that the hoax at the heart of it actually took place in Melbourne in 1946. As so often before, this extravagantly gifted writer has created something bewilderingly original and powerful. (Nov. 30) Forecast: There is no denying the fascination of Carey's tale, but his devoted readers may find it more difficult to succumb to the allure of a neglected poet than to the more obvious thrills of an outlaw life. 75,000 first printing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Hoping to gain some insight into her parents' troubled marriage, London poetry editor Sarah Wode-Douglass accepts an invitation from novelist and family friend John Slater to accompany him to his Malaysian retreat. Her focus, however, quickly turns to another Malay resident, the enigmatic Christopher Chubb, who in the 1940s devised a literary hoax to embarrass a young poetry editor at a fashionable magazine. Using the pseudonym Bob McCorkle, Chubb submitted poems that were admittedly imitative and, for the era, racy; their subsequent publication led to an obscenity trial for the editor, who came to a bad end. Strangely, no one seemed interested in Chubb's confession, and things became more complicated when a seven-foot giant claiming to be Bob McCorkle appeared in the flesh. This strange golem cursed Chubb's life; born at 24 and determined to possess a childhood he never had, he absconded with Chubb's young daughter. When Sarah learns this story, she becomes obsessed with what McCorkle means to Chubb and Chubb's efforts to reclaim his daughter. Carey's fans won't find this novel as rich in background and characterization as earlier works like Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang; the narrative is pared down, and there's a definite emphasis on action in the closing pages. But this is no flaw-the book reads like a shot, and as before, the author peoples his tales with charming and intelligent rogues, albeit 20th-century ones this time around. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/03.]-Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The two-time New Zealand Booker winner (The True History of the Kelly Gang, 2000, etc.) traces the honeycombed ramifications of a brazen literary hoax (based on a real incident that occurred in 1943 in Australia). Carey’s initial narrator is Englishwoman Sarah Wode-Douglass, who edits a struggling magazine, and, more or less impulsively, accompanies renegade writer John Slater on a trip to Kuala Lumpur—despite "hating him all my life"—for what she believes was Slater’s adulterous responsibility for her mother’s suicide. That’s one complication. Then, in Malaysia, Sarah encounters poet maudit Christopher Chubb, now a homeless indigent subsisting as a bicycle repairman, who claims a history with Slater that the latter hastily disavows. Chubb makes an extravagant claim: that he had perpetrated a hoax by circulating his own poems as the works of nonexistent genius "Bob McCorkle" (the fallout from this deception caused the death of a young editor, and destroyed Chubb’s career); and that "McCorkle" came to life, swore vengeance on his "creator," and went on to ruin several other lives. Chubb’s and Slater’s conflicting stories are juxtaposed with Sarah’s editorial quandary (should she scoop the literary world by publishing faked "masterpieces"?) and increasingly dangerous investigations. Carey’s corker of a plot (with echoes of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Roman Polanski’s film Chinatown, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) delivers surprise after surprise and peaks with a masterly extended set-piece that pits Chubb vs. "McCorkle" in the steaming hotbed of (then) Malaya under Japanese occupation. Issues of artistic inspiration, integrity, and authenticity are thus brilliantly allegorizedin a wonderland of a yarn, of which (the not entirely veracious) Slater declares "He [i.e., Chubb] will drag you into his delusional world, have you believing the most preposterous things." So will Peter Carey, God bless him. A Nabokovian masterpiece. First printing of 75,000
