My Life as a Fake
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Using a real literary fraud from Australia as the basis for his main plot, Carey introduces the reader to Lady Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a small English poetry magazine, always on the verge of financial collapse. Persuaded by John Slater, a poet and friend of her deceased parents, to accompany him from England to Kuala Lumpur in 1972, she is recollecting her encounter there with Christopher Chubb, a refugee from Australia where he had, in the 1940s, perpetrated a major literary hoax, designed to protest the trends in modern poetry. Chubb had written and succeeded in getting published a series of "poems," supposedly by a man named McCorkle.
The fraud, which took place in the 1940s, is told in flashbacks from the 1972 trip, mainly by Lady Sarah and Chubb. Its wry humor and social commentary are fun to read, with Chubb mocking the state of literary awareness in Australia at that time and providing information about the obscenity trial which resulted from his hoax. When Chubb cleverly shows her one page from another work by "McCorkle," Sarah sees it as a masterpiece akin to "The Wasteland," and tries to obtain the whole manuscript, the publication of which would save her magazine. Sarah's life in 1983, and shocking revelations by John Slater about Sarah's parents, their marriage, and her mother's death in the late 1930's widen the focus and time frame. The reader quickly recognizes, as all the characters play their parts and the story develops, that all are guilty of some sort of fakery.
The second half of the book, however, becomes a wild, often wacky adventure story as separate new plots develop, the time frame changes to World War II, and several new characters, unrelated to the main plot, tell their own stories. Sarah and Slater play no real role in the action as Chubb tries to rescue his daughter from a suddenly real, seven-foot-tall McCorkle, who has kidnapped her and run from island to island in Indonesia and Malaysia, where the Japanese have invaded and have begun vividly described atrocities.
Separate, virtually unconnected plots in four time frames--1983, 1939, 1972, and World War II--revealed by four or five different narrators, in settings that include England, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia all contribute to a confusion of focus. The characters, events, and plot line from the beginning of the book have little if any overlap with the characters, events, and plots in the middle. Though the several sections are exciting and imaginative separately, they did not cohere for me, and I found myself thinking of the first half as a stand-alone novella, with the remaining episodes connected to it as a series of memorable, separately developed short stories. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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23 reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Finding the Real Amidst Words
2 Nov 2003
Format:Hardcover
Following from Carey's hugely successful True History of the Kelly Gang, the author plucks another charismatic figure from history to reform in his fiction. This time he has taken the Ern Malley hoax and rewritten it using a bounty of sumptuous detail. In the 1940s a couple of writers sought to play a joke on the surrealist movement of the time. Their hoax got out of hand. They composed poetry using a mixture of their own original work, Shakespeare, a rhyming dictionary and a US army report. However, it was taken seriously, published and then caused a scandal because the content of the work was considered indecent. In many ways the editor who first received the work considered that the fake poet really did come to life. Stemming from this thought, Carey creates the story of Christopher Chubb who similarly sets up a literary hoax. This time, the fictional poet really does come to life.
The narrator of My Life is a Fake is the English poetry editor Sarah Wode-Douglass. She travels to Kuala Lumpur on the invitation of her acquaintance, the poet John Slater, with whom she has a long and complicated past. By accident she meets Chubb who is working in a bicycle repair shop. He gives her a glimpse of a poem by the poet he created named McCorkle. Sarah is desperate to retrieve this poet's work to make her own claim to fame. However, first she must hear the whole gruesome story behind it. It is a complicated affair leading Sarah and the reader to wonder what is real and what is fake. McCorkle comes to life and discredits Chubb's own life. Not only is Chubb's past revealed, but through conversations Slater Sarah's own past is examined. Another fake is revealed.
Carey does a magnificent job at evoking the environment of Kuala Lumpur in this time period. He creates a thrilling story despite its complicated plot. As the story progresses it becomes confusing who exactly is narrating the story. This fight to be heard seems to be the point because the spotlight is the object of desire for which the characters' manic ambition is set. Lies are the fuel used to gain entry into it. Each character struggles to make their lies sound the most convincing. It is the reader's delightful job to sift through for the truth.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
A compelling novel
24 May 2004
Format:Hardcover
Sarah Elizabeth Jane is an editor with "The Modern Review". When her friend the novelist John Slater suggests that she joins him on a trip to Kuala Lumpur, Sarah does not know the maze she is about to enter, "from which, thirteen years later, I haven't yet escaped" as she puts it. Shortly after their arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Sarah makes the acquaintance of an Australian in a shabby bicycle repair shop in Jalan Campbell, a man called Christopher Chubb. She soon finds out that he is the villain in the McCorkle Hoax dating back to 1946. Chubb gave birth to a phantom poet called "Bob McCorkle" who never existed but whom the Australian gave a life, a death and a biography. He then delivered a collection of poems called "Personae" to editor David Weiss, a man profoundly detested by Chubb since their common schooldays at Forest Street. Sarah is speechless as Chubb mockingly recites a passage from a poem called "Swamps": "Areas of stagnant water serve / As breeding grounds...", a passage Chubb had copied from an army manual of mosquito eradication! When Weiss published "Personae", he was arrested and prosecuted for "obscenity". As Sarah listens to the beginning of Chubb's account of his life, she is drawn into his harrowing narration. Chubb has a kind of magnetic effect on her and she can't resist wanting to learn more about Chubb's past, a maze of events on the verge of credibility. A beautifully crafted piece of storytelling, a powerful work of fiction, Mr Carey's narrative is fast, furious and haunting.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Murder, Mayhem and a Literary Hoax!
9 Feb 2004
Format:Hardcover
Mr. Carey spins quite a yarn here. Sarah Wode-Douglas, the editor of a poetry magazine in London, travels to Malaysia with one John Slater a writer a little like Truman Capote without the mincing-- that is, he is more famous for being a famous writer than for writing--a man she thinks had an affair with her mother and is responsible for her death. There they meet a Christopher Chubb, an aging Australian. Chubb tells a story that has shades of ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Joseph's HEART OF DARKNESS, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and is as convoluted as The DA VINCI CODE.
Central to the story is a literary hoax based on an incident that actually took place in Australia, according to the Author's Note at the end of this fairly short novel. (266 pages)You may not care a whit about poetry, pretentious intellectuals or literary hoaxes; on the other hand, you will race through this novel with the speed you read any first rate mystery. I had no abiding love for any of these characters but was fascinated by this great tale.
Mr. Carey is nothing is not a master of the language, should I say Australian. There are nice Australian touches: "he said he would give me a hiding if I did not get off his irises straight away" and "I therefore was forced to take shank's pony to the city but I am used to walking. . ."
Surely Carey is saying something about literary criticism, which can be one of the world's most pretentious endeavors. There is the question of what is real and what isn't and how significant is poetry after all? Sarah, the first person narrator, opines that there is no value that can be put on fine poetry: ". . . but what price would I put on a Shakespeare sonnet? How much for Milton, Donne, Coleridge, Yeats?" W. H. Auden, whom Slater knew, is quoted in the novel. I remember, however, that Auden said that "poetry makes nothing happen."
Hey, I don't believe you have to be an English major to like this novel. Query: since Mr. Carey now lives in New York City, do we get to claim him as an American writer? I recall that he wrote a very beautiful and moving piece after September 11, 2001 about "feeling" like an American.
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