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Author: Peter Carey
One in Bloomsbury - The Writer and the City series
In the midst of the 2000 Olympic games,
Australia native Carey returns to Sydney after
a seventeen-year absence. Examining the urban
landscape as both a tourist and a prodigal
son, Carey structures his account around the
four elements—Earth, Air, Fire, and
Water—insisting on the primacy of nature
to this unique Australian cityscape.
As his quixotic account unfolds, Carey looks
both inward into his past (as well as Sydney's
own violent history) and outward onto the
city's familiar landmarks and surroundings—the
Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Blue
Mountains—achieving just the right alchemy
of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water to tell Sydney's
extraordinary story.
From Publishers Weekly
In the second volume of Bloomsbury's The Writer and the City series, Carey
(Oscar and Lucinda), an Australian native, returns to Sydney after 17
years. Armed with a battery-powered tape recorder, he badgers old friends
including a Vietnam vet, a lawyer and an architect to contribute stories
that might define Sydney. "A metropolis is, by definition, inexhaustible,
and by the time I departed, thirty days later, Sydney was as unknowable
to me as it had been on that clear April morning when I arrived," Carey
concludes. He deftly intertwines dry facts about climate, geography and
history with poetic stream of consciousness. The result is a desultory,
impressionistic love letter to the city, structured loosely around earth,
air, fire and water (one friend protected his home from bush fires; another
barely survived the "murderous seas of the 1998 Sydney-Hobart race" which
sank six yachts and killed five men). The acclaimed Booker Prize winner
lets his characters direct the story, stepping in briefly to explain ("A
rissole, in case you are from across the sea, is a kind of hamburger patty,
but it is also an arsehole and also an RSL [Returned Services League]")
and describe ("On Bondi I feel the space everywhere, not just in
the luxury of beach and light but in that imagined house two streets back
where I will not have to throw a book away to make room for each new one").
Carey touches lightly but firmly on Sydney's own brand of white guilt
and patriotism, as well as its culture and landmarks. While other travelogues
may provide more information, this effort will leave more lasting impressions.
© 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. |
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$16.95 (hardcover)
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