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E S Pittenger
, January 01, 2011
(view all comments by E S Pittenger)
Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winner and a nominee again in 2010, has written an improvisational "what-if" novel based on Alexis de Tocqueville. Olivier de Garmont ("Tocqueville") sets off with his reluctant side-kick and traveling companion, Parrot (aka John Larrit) to explore the New World.
Through their eyes, Carey recreates the young democracy and fledgling power, America of the mid 19th C., for us to discover at the same time as they do.
Olivier is the last heir of French aristocrats who kept their heads following the Revolution but fear for their son's safety under Napoleon. To protect him, they send him to America to undertake an examination of its penal system and the extraordinary idea behind it: that criminals can be reformed in prison. The mysterious one-armed Monsieur, the Marquis de Tilbot, a family friend, introduces Olivier to his protege-servant, Perroquet, or Parrot, a sublimely arrogant individual who trained as an engraver when he was apprenticed among a den of forgers in England, who were put out of business in a gory manner. The child Parrot fled into the woods, dodging Lord Devon's bullets.
Years later, Parrot and Olivier are United under the conspiratorial eye of Monsieur. After some arm twisting and manipulation, it is agreed that Olivier, accompanied by "secretary" Parrot, will set sail for America to write a book on prison reform, complete with engravings by Parrot, of course.
That Olivier and Parrot are opposite personalities, with nothing in common except their shared escapes from premature death, and that they are antagonistic yet dependent upon one another, drives the tale forward. Because of their antipathy, we see the new country from two points of view (not always from a positive aspect), and witness the changes in the heroes who labor under the influence of new American ideas and prosper among new American acquaintances.
Both men awaken, but in different ways and to differing resolutions: Olivier to the love of a particularly independent young American woman; Parrot to the bounteous prospects entrepreneurship offers, which he dreams will lift him into independence.
Carey's latest novel reads like a Dickensian picaresque. It is a book rich in characterization, atmosphere, theme, and language; it is vigorous, brilliant, original, and superbly entertaining. It is a book I would read again and again, desert island or no, and one that I can recommend to readers without reservation.
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