Life From A Window

Billed as a comic novel, I have to admit it took a while for me to adjust to and appreciate the gentle humour which runs through the book.  Worse it took me to about about halfway through before I started to feel any sympathy with the protagonist, Arthur Less.  Possibly it's my cultural distance from almost every character in the novel - or maybe it just isn't as witty as the critics have made out. Less is a mildly successful novelist on a cobbled together world tour devised purely to get him out of the country for the wedding of his former partner. Only while in Paris and cornered at a party by a Nemesis, who explains Less's lack of popularity to him as being down to Less being "a bad gay" did I really start to warm to him.  I suspect most if us feel that for much of our lives we've pretty bad at whatever it is we are supposed to be.  From that point I rooted for the poor guy, in his one suit (when his luggage hadn't gone astray). In the end it...

Short version - I've just read this - it's brilliant. At first it reveals itself as a story of a marriage, a car race, gender politics in post-war Australia and a slightly odd next-door neighbour fired from a teaching job for dangling a boy from an upstairs window by his ankles.  Enough for interesting, enjoyable and compelling first few chapters. As the novel develops Carey gradually reveals its dark heart, that of a nation, his nation,  built on genocide.  Without being preached at, we are led through a series of set pieces and characters which can only scratch the surface of the devastating truth of Australia's history and shame.  But scratches deep enough to unleash an unsettling stench of racism and brutality.  We "know" this stuff about Australia - but the way Carey personalises it makes it real, so we can really know it, feel it, see it through the eyes of those living with the legacy of it. Through all that, it has flashes of humour and warmth and...