Peter kemp sunday times biography of michael
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Peter Kemp
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times, January 24, 2010
Fizzing with the fictional panache that has twice won him the Booker prize, Peter Carey’s new novel is wide-roving
even by his standards. As his previous books have shown, misfits on the move enthral him: a con man careering around Australia’s vast landmass, convicts and Victorian eccentrics shipbound for New South Wales, expatriates roaming the Far East, fugitives from New York to Queensland’s rainforest.
Parrot and Olivier in America opens up his most expansive fictional journeying yet. Alternating between two narrative voices – the dandified tones of Olivier de Garmont, a French aristocrat, and the plebeian commentary of his servant (nicknamed Parrot because of his gifts as a mimic) – the book begins in post-revolutionary France, embarks on a twomonth voyage from Le Havre to New York, travels around the raw settlements and rudimentary cities of 1830s America and loops back, through Parrot’s memories, to England’s West Country in the 1790s, a convict ship to Australia and life in one of its penal colonies.
Carey’s earlier novels have featured lookalikes of historical figures ranging from Charles Dickens to Ned Kelly. Here, Olivier is modelled on Alexis de Tocquevil
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My Father's Fortune: A Life
It's often very funny, always very interesting, and soaked in a wistful sort of melancholy that sometimes deepens into a compelling sadness.
Andrew Motion, The Guardian
...after the outstanding journalism, the brilliant plays – both comic and cerebral – the subtle novels, the masterful translations, one of our best contemporary writers has now made another genre, the family memoir, his own.
The Telegraph
With this slim, moving memoir, Frayn has finally managed to respond to the father he so clearly loved. He does so with immense panache, writing in a way that evokes emotion without ever lapsing into bathos, threading sentences through with a gentle, touching humour...Tom Frayn's life is not particularly exceptional and therein lies its charm – the story reflects the experiences of any number of men and women; that it is told so well is testament to his son's talent.
The Observer
A profoundly affecting study of family myths and legends.
Financial Times
A delightful and wholly unsentimental memoir that balances beautifully the twin responses of tears and laughter.
Judges, Costa Biography Award 2010
Frayn pays tribute here to his quiet influence with a similarly light touch but this is ultimately a profoundly touching pi
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