Amnesia (Peter Carey, Hamish Hamilton)

After recent novels set in England and Germany (The Chemistry of Tears) and the US (Parrot and Olivier in America), Peter Carey returns to Australia for the first time since 2008’s His Illegal Self in his new novel Amnesia. He returns with a vengeance to Melbourne in particular, focusing on the inner northern suburbs stretching from Carlton to Coburg. Amnesia is centred on a young female cyber criminal called Gaby Baillieux and narrated by disreputable journalist Felix Moore, who has found himself in strife after being sued for defamation. Woody Townes, a rich property developer from Melbourne, hires Felix to write Gaby’s story, and Felix quickly finds himself in even more trouble. Nevertheless, he delves into Gaby’s family history to uncover her past. For all his years in New York, Carey hasn’t lost touch with the Australian vernacular, and the voice of Felix Moore leaps off the page. In part two of the novel, Carey shifts the point of view to allow the voices of Gaby and her mother to emerge as well, and as always, he handles the dialogue masterfully. At one point Felix claims that he has ‘a lifetime of hard-won technical ability’ as a writer, and the same could be said of Carey. However, this novel doesn’t come together quite as satisfyingly as some of his best novels have.

Blair Mahoney teaches English, literature and philosophy at Melbourne High School