My Life as a Fake, Peter Carey
My Life as a Fake, Peter Carey
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My Life as a Fake

Author: Peter Carey

Narrator: Susan Lyons

Unabridged: 9 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 03/10/2008


Synopsis

In Melbourne in the 1950s, an arrogant young Australian poet named Christopher Chubb decides to teach his country a lesson about pretension and authenticity. Choosing as his target the trendiest of the literary magazines, he submits for publication the entire works of one Bob McCorkle, a working class poet of raw power and sexual frankness, conveniently dead at twenty-four and entirely the product of Chubb's imagination.

Not only does the magazine fall for the hoax, but the local authorities also sue its editor for publishing obscenity. At the trial someone uncannily resembling the faked photograph of the invented McCorkle leaps to his feet. At this moment a horrified Chubb is confronted by the malevolent being he has created.

About Peter Carey

Peter Carey is the author of nine novels, including the Booker Prize-winning Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang. Born in Australia in 1943, he now lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on December 05, 2023

Do you live your own life? Or do you try to imitate the others? And if you’re trying to imitate a fictional personage will you become one? Will you end up as an ultimate hoax? Peter Carey is once again full of originality. And ‘hoax’ is a keyword of My Life as a Fake… He is right, he said quietly. The......more

Goodreads review by William2 on April 22, 2024

Second reading A thriller. The novel's structure is of the Chinese box sort, in which story is nested within story. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has such a structure and is also, funnily enough, alluded to here. Here's John Updike's review from The New Yorker. November 16, 2003 Peter Carey’s new novel,......more

Goodreads review by Meg on October 01, 2009

Take a real literary hoax from 1940s Australia and mix with Frankenstein...this is what you get. If you are a genius. Lately I am going through a bit of an Australian/New Zealand reading craze. I had never heard of Peter Carey. Now I am a wreck who can't stop thinking about how much I would like to......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 14, 2015

In 1943 two conservative classicists set out to expose the absurdity of modernist poetry. Both James McAuley and Harold Stewart were classical trained poets, who didn’t think much about modernism; it didn’t rhyme, didn’t make sense and it just didn’t look right, it was fake poetry. If an everyman ca......more

Goodreads review by Chris on April 06, 2008

This is the second novel by Peter Cary I have read. His Illegal Self was the first. I liked My Life as a Fake much more. The language is rich and organic mirroring the jungle in which it takes place. The plot pulled my along as well. It kept things a mystery until the end. The novel is narrated by S......more