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Peter Carey

Parrot and Olivier in America Paperback – 3 Feb. 2011

by Peter Carey (Author)

3.9 227 ratings

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Olivier is an aristocrat, the traumatized child of survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot the son of an itinerant printer who always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be brought together by their travels in America.

When Olivier sets sail for America, ostensibly to study its prisons but in reality to save his neck from one more revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, and their picaresque travels together and apart - in love and politics, prisons and the world of art - Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy, in theory and in practice, with dazzling wit and inventiveness.

Print length

592 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Faber & Faber
Publication date

3 Feb. 2011
Dimensions

13 x 3.5 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

0571253326
ISBN-13

978-0571253326
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Product description

Review

'I finished it with unabated enjoyment ... Dazzling.' --Guardian<br \><br \>'Carey is a wily and supremely confident storyteller on a grand scale.' --The Times<br \><br \>'Fizzes with the same fictional panache that has twice won Carey the Booker prize.' --Sunday Times

'Carey is a wily and supremely confident storyteller on a grand scale.' --The Times

'Fizzing with fictional panache ... Exhilarating.' --Sunday Times

Book Description

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America is the story of an extraordinary friendship across two continents, from the author of Amnesia, Oscar and Lucinda andTrue History of the Kelly Gang.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber; Main - Re-issue edition (3 Feb. 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571253326
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571253326
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13 x 3.5 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 157,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 11,951 in Adventure Stories & Action
- 16,576 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- 19,215 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
3.9 227 ratings

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3.9 out of 5

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Elka

A colourful adventure.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 18 March 2011

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A big fan of Peter Carey since I read Oscar & Lucinda many years ago, I was therefore very pleased to get my hands on a early copy of this.
After a slightly faltering start, I wasn't sure where in the revolution we were, I found myself totally gripped once Parrot 'spoke'. As different as chalk and cheese we hear from both Olivier, a French Aristocrat, escaping the aftershocks of the revolution and Parrot his unwilling English servant as they are forced to travel together to America.
Carey writes with great wit and humour, full of acute observations and memorable characters. Loved this and would definately recommend this to all Carey fans.

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R. A. Davison

A disappointment after a promising opening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 1 February 2012

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Parrot and Olivier In America was a nominee for The 2010 Booker Prize alongside Room, The Long Song, In A Strange Room, C, and winner The Finkler Question. It was the first Peter Carey novel that I had read despite his previous Booker success with Oscar and Lucinda and True History Of The Kelly Gang.

It got off to such a great start and I thought it was really promising. A shadow hangs over the family life of young Olivier, and he eventually discovers that his parents narrowly escaped execution during The French Revolution. He is a pompous, petulant, sickly boy, with parents who are perpetually on edge. I was really engaged by it, and assumed that this would be a book I would enjoy....

Sadly, this proves not to be the case. The novel alternates point-of-view narratives between Olivier and his future man servant Parrot, and it was from Parrot's first chapter onward that the book began to lose me. Overall, I found the narrative verbose, uninteresting and frustrating, and in part without credibility.

There is some humour to be had when Parrot and Olivier first become a duo on account of their clear hatred of each other. And also when Olivier, due to his mother's continued infantilisation of him finds himself shackled to Parrot once they reach America having hoped to be rid of him. I wouldn't say that this small degree of humour would elevate Parrot and Olivier to the status of "comic novel" not in my eyes anyway.

More frustratingly Parrot and Olivier lacks much at all in the way of plot. Even though he is sent to America largely under a false pretext, it seems unlikely that a character such as Olivier would ever be dispatched to research criminal rehabilitative practice but so we must believe. The two seem to travel about the East Coast of America almost pointlessly.

In some respects Parrot and Olivier is a "look at" what happens when "Old World" collides with "New World" try as he might, Olivier can't reconcile his notions of the way the world should work from the point of view of a French aristocrat, to the way things do work in America. Whilst Parrot thrives, Olivier flounders. It is a comment on how the birth of America as a society served to level social class.

The sad thing is, is that a story of the world through the eyes of aristocrats a generation removed from the French Revolution is a really interesting prospect, but instead, Carey creates an examination of the "master/servant relationship" and social class in general, the likes of which has been done before and better. I felt dreadfully let down by a book which got off to such a great start.

I was recently speaking with someone on Twitter about the Booker Prize, and the level of snobbery around it, I venture to say that Parrot and Olivier in America was nominated not for its virtues but so as not to slight twice winner Peter Carey. It's just not much of a good story in the end, and I wouldn't recommend it 5/10

4 people found this helpful

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Ms Rosie Sim

Lovely

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 28 March 2022

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Bought as a gift. Came with verification of edition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 23 December 2011

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Enjoyable read about the coming together of two rather different characters, both of whom are well formed in this novel. Attention to the details of the period when the newly independent America was getting off the ground are well written as one would expect from Peter Carey.

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folkdancer

Who gave this the Booker Prize?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 4 April 2014

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I don't know who these people are that give out awards for good books or a good read but I have rarely enjoyed any of them and this was no exception. Our book group read this and no one enjoyed it. To keep going off into French sentences without a translation, it was all just too much like hard work to read and it was more a matter of perseverance than enjoyment that any of us reached the end. It's not as though we are unintelligent as a group, living in a very middle class area of Edinburgh where most inhabitants are teacher, bankers or other professional people and none of our group is young so we have a lot of reading experience among us yet all of felt that we will be avoiding any other works by this author. This would probably make a good subject for the Readers Digest condensed books and maybe then it would be worth the effort to read what could have been a reasonable story.

One person found this helpful

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Janice

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 2 January 2018

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Great book, well written (Peter Carey of course it woukd be!) imaginative and unusual. I loved it in the Audible version as the reader really brought it to life. Go for it!

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Lynn

Parrot and Oliver in America

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 21 November 2012

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If it had not been chosen by my reading group, I would not have finished it. Some passages are beautifully written, some words are made up by the author but some of the language in the book was never used in the nineteen century. (I refer to contemporary letters from Olivier to his mother). It is supposed to be funny - I failed to find it so. The historical descriptions were interesting, the story woven around it hardly credible.

One person found this helpful

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adrian jones

Excellent.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 19 December 2018

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The splendid Peter Carey on top form. Witty, wise and utterly wonderful!

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