Parrot and Olivier in America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.11 (657 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0307476014 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
With the story of their unlikely friendship, Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy with the dazzling inventiveness and richness of characterization, story, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.. Their lives are joined when Olivier sets sail for the New World to save his neck from one more revolution and Parrot is sent with him as spy, protector, foe, and foil. Man Booker Prize FinalistNational Book Award FinalistTwo-time Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey’s latest feat of imagination is an irrepressible, audacious, and tre
David Keymer said A FINE COMIC NOVEL THAT IS A RIFF ON TOCQUEVILLE IN AMERICA. This exceptionally well written and consistently enjoyable novel succeeds both as a novel of manners and a novel of ideas. It's an extended riff on Tocqueville -not that Carey, an author of great discernment, has done anything so crude as to fictionalize Tocqueville's and his friend and associate Beaumont's epoch-making journey to America in 18A FINE COMIC NOVEL THAT IS A RIFF ON TOCQUEVILLE IN AMERICA This exceptionally well written and consistently enjoyable novel succeeds both as a novel of manners and a novel of ideas. It's an extended riff on Tocqueville -not that Carey, an author of great discernment, has done anything so crude as to fictionalize Tocqueville's and his friend and associate Beaumont's epoch-making journey to America in 1831, a journey that resulted in the most insightful book about that young republic ever to appear, a book that is still a treasure hoard of insights into our country's mores and foibles even t. 1, a journey that resulted in the most insightful book about that young republic ever to appear, a book that is still a treasure hoard of insights into our country's mores and foibles even t. Unreliable narrators Peter Carey has always been a master at the unreliable narrator and in Parrot and Olivier we are treated to two of the them, alternating chapters and versions of the truth. Olivier is a spoilt young French aristocrat who is sent abroad to save his skin at the time of the 1830 revolution. His unwilling servant is Parrot who has far more practical commonsense than his master but has been sorely abused by dubious French aristocrats before. Both of the damaged heroes are searching for love and respect and to varying degrees they find i. David Cady said Reader in Limbo. I haven't read many of Peter Carey's books, but have enjoyed tremendously those I have. "Jack Maggs" was a clever, pitch-perfect reworking of Dickens' "Great Expectations," and "True History of the Kelly Gang," for which he won his second Booker Prize, brilliantly chronicled the life of Australia's Billy the Kid. I was so looking forward to his take on post-Revolutionary France and America, confident that it would be a colorful, evocative ride. And while the novel certainly evoked the early 1800s in meticulous and rich detail, it w
Carey brings de Tocqueville to life through the fictionalized character of Olivier de Garmont, a coddled and conceited French aristocrat. And in the unfolding, we are led by mystery towards discovery. From there I stepped into the lives of Oscar and Lucinda and then Jack Maggs. The small revolutions of human desire and failure.The men develop an understanding and a friendship and a complexity that is a hallmark of a Carey novel: it is a wonder, as he points out, how many lives can be held within one single skin. The task of fiction is to achieve is, by the power of the written word, a glimpse of truth that we didn't necessarily know was available to us. Best Books of the Month, April 2010