View source for His Illegal Self by Peter Carey

{{infobox1 
|title=His Illegal Self 
|author=Peter Carey 
|reviewer=Paul Harrop 
|genre=Literary Fiction 
|summary=An intense look at relationships, with a real feel for outsiders and landscape, conveyed in rich, beautifully-wrought prose. Much to enjoy if you can accept the slightly artificial plot. 
|rating=4.5 
|buy=Yes 
|borrow=Yes 
|pages=288
|publisher= Faber and Faber 
|date=March 2009 
|isbn=978-0571231546
|cover=0571231543
|aznuk=0571231543
|aznus=030726372X
}}
Seven-year-old Che Selkirk has a lot of questions. Why has he been taken 
away from his parental grandmother? Who is Dial, the woman who has 
abducted him? Is she his mother? Why have they left New York so suddenly 
for a hippy commune in the Australian outback? And most importantly, 
where is his daddy?

The little he knows about his parents he has learned from his older 
friend Cameron. They are something to do with SDS – Students for a 
Democratic Society, living 'underground' as part of the sixties US 
radical protest movement. And, says Cameron, they will come for him one day.

Peter Carey's novel is a touching look at the confusion and hope upon 
which we build our identities. In Che and Dial, and the love and anger 
which bind them, he shows us two naive, lost souls trying to make sense 
of a world where nothing is certain.

That uncertainty extends to almost every aspect of their lives. They are 
referred to throughout as 'the mother' and 'the boy'. As such, they 
become primal, feral figures. Living beyond the law and conventional 
society, where nobody is known by their real names, they come to realise 
that the only dependable thing they have is each other.

In a book where relatively little happens and the major plot event 
(flight to Australia) seems arbitrary, sudden and unexplained, 
psychological accuracy and dense, often poetic prose sustain the reader. 
Like his characters, we are cut adrift from conventional textual 
landmarks: there are no speech marks. Authorial narrative and 
characters' internal monologues alternate without warning. We switch 
between the present and flashbacks, through which Carey fills in some of 
the blanks in his characters' history.

Carey's skills as a writer, though, make sure you are rarely confused 
about what is happening or who is talking or thinking. His brief 
sentences and short chapters crackle with arresting, not to say 
occasionally puzzling, similes. Animal imagery abounds: in the first few 
pages alone, Che is described as a ''lovely insect''; he and Dial 
''slippery together as newborn goats''. Comically, he describes the 
fugitive pair as being ''on the lamb''.

That oneness with nature, and their feral existence in the bush, make 
the physical realities of the novel as acute as the emotional insights. 
Carey, who lived on a commune himself, uses his direct experience to 
bring us a convincing, visceral picture of life in direct contact with 
the earth (even, at one stage, living literally underground).

That immersion in the landscape, and in the minds of Che and Dial are 
the real rewards of this book. The paucity of action, and the curious 
lack of tension as sharp reality closes in on the couple, are the price 
we pay for Carey’s intimacy with his characters.

In compensation, we get a text which will reward re-reading, if only to 
savour the beauty of the words and its profound explorations of the 
meanings of identity, family and love.

I'd like to thank the publsihers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.

If this book appeals to you then you might also enjoy [[Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje|Divisadero]] by [[:Category:Michael Ondaatje|Michael Ondaatje]].

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