Fiendishly devious and addictively readable, Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake is a moral labyrinth constructed around the uneasy relati...
read full description
reviews
Oct 01, 2009
Meg
rated it: 
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 french this guy. I loved the strangeness of it...which seemed very Nabokov to me. I love authors who can take ridiculous set ups and make them so real you dream about nothing else while you're reading
More...
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Aug 13, 2011
Amanda
rated it: 
The lyrical, elegant prose seduced me from page 1.
How could I resist this?
“That same year I was born… to a beautiful, impatient Australian mother and a no less handsome but rather posh English father, Lord Wiliam Wode-Douglass, generally known as Boofy.”
This book is based on the infamous Ern Malley scandal that took place in the 1940’s in Australia.
The story in the novel is about a hoax avant-garde poet who is created by a conservative academic named Christopher Chubb. He do More...
How could I resist this?
“That same year I was born… to a beautiful, impatient Australian mother and a no less handsome but rather posh English father, Lord Wiliam Wode-Douglass, generally known as Boofy.”
This book is based on the infamous Ern Malley scandal that took place in the 1940’s in Australia.
The story in the novel is about a hoax avant-garde poet who is created by a conservative academic named Christopher Chubb. He do More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Apr 06, 2008
Topher
rated it: 
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 Sarah Wode-Douglas, the editor of an English poetry magazine. She is traveling with a rich playboy poet who she blames for her mother’s suicide. He drags her to Kuala Lumpur. There she encount More...
The novel is narrated by Sarah Wode-Douglas, the editor of an English poetry magazine. She is traveling with a rich playboy poet who she blames for her mother’s suicide. He drags her to Kuala Lumpur. There she encount More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Mar 03, 2009
Nora
rated it:
Slow to get into, but once you do, you are taken on a whirlwind tour of a chase through Malaysia. Care's novel ends in a rather open-ended fashion, leaving you wondering how much of the story to believe.
***
I went to bed with the disconcerting knowledge that almost everything I had assumed about my life was incorrect, that I had been baptised in blood and raised on secrets and misconstructions which had, obviously, made me who I was (133).
***
I went to bed with the disconcerting knowledge that almost everything I had assumed about my life was incorrect, that I had been baptised in blood and raised on secrets and misconstructions which had, obviously, made me who I was (133).
0 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Mar 31, 2009
Shannon
rated it:
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
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jan 13, 2009
My Life as a Fake, by Peter Carey. A. Narrated by susan Lyons, produced by Recorded Books, and downloaded from Audible.
I don’t know if this would be called a mystery or not, but there is a mystery and there is a murder, and there is the death of the protagonist’s mother which has never been explained, so I’m calling it a mystery. The publisher’s note states:
Two-time Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang, shows again why he is one of the most a More...
I don’t know if this would be called a mystery or not, but there is a mystery and there is a murder, and there is the death of the protagonist’s mother which has never been explained, so I’m calling it a mystery. The publisher’s note states:
Two-time Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang, shows again why he is one of the most a More...
Oct 11, 2011
Nick
rated it:
One of my favourite books of all time. As you probably know, it uses as its basis the Ern Malley hoax (see more at: http://www.ernmalley.com/ ) which was an attempt at a critique of the taste for the Modern in Australian poetry, a dig at the pseuds. Carey looks at how it might have all come back on the hoaxer. What happens if you create a monster? The story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is very much on PC's mind here, and he doesn't mind signposting that. I saw a few parallels with Coleridge's
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jan 14, 2012
David
rated it:
Peter Carey has taken a real literary hoax and made it into a fictional story with many connections to reality.
The main characters are Australians, and their quest involves pursuing an unknown literary talent to find a trove of brilliant writing. The self referential nature of this plot is under stated in the unfolding story. The locations are well written, hot humid Asia comes to life in all its noise and beauty. Strange circumstances are blended with the ordinary inconveniences of travel More...
The main characters are Australians, and their quest involves pursuing an unknown literary talent to find a trove of brilliant writing. The self referential nature of this plot is under stated in the unfolding story. The locations are well written, hot humid Asia comes to life in all its noise and beauty. Strange circumstances are blended with the ordinary inconveniences of travel More...
Nov 09, 2009
Adrian
rated it:
Ern Mallory, apparently, was a famous Australian literary hoaxer circa 1940. The hoax consisted of a handful of faux-T.S. Eliot highbrow modernist poems written by a pair of anti-modernist poets as a sort of a joke. The poems were intended to be cliche parodies illustrating all the worst, most self-indulgent, hyperbolic aspects of modernist poetry. The fictitious poet, Mallory, was conscientiously packaged as a Marxist class hero--a well-read, erudite, self-educated working man (bicycle repai
More...
May 29, 2011
Nicole
rated it: 
This novel was disjointed, confusing, and annoying. At times there was clever dialogue which kept me going but ultimately it was to no avail as the entire thing collapsed on itself by the end. The story of a poetry magazine editor who travels to Malaysia with an acquaintance, the editor stumbles upon a man who presents a book full of poetry of such high caliber, the editor believes she has discovered the modern TS Elliot. However, with the poems comes the necessity of slowing prying apart the
More...
Jun 02, 2011
Cliff
rated it:
This book conflates the Ern Malley hoax (a fashionable literateur is duped into hailing a fictitious working-class poet as a genius), the Frankenstein story (the hoaxer becomes convinced that his creation has come to life and is pursuing him) and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (the narrator is forced to listen while the half-crazed hoaxer tries to expiate his guilt).
It takes the theme that what is imagined in fiction is also to some extent real, and pushes it to its limits through More...
It takes the theme that what is imagined in fiction is also to some extent real, and pushes it to its limits through More...
Feb 03, 2009
Ali
rated it:
This was my first Peter Carey, and if others say it is not his best, I'll definitely have to read his other works. I may have been predestined to like it because I work in the publishing world.
I disagree with people who say that it is confusing in content or in the way it is written. I like the jumps back and forth between "present day" and the past. One aspect that may be confusing is whether or not Chubb is crazy (or rather, how crazy), so it reads a bit like a psychological th More...
I disagree with people who say that it is confusing in content or in the way it is written. I like the jumps back and forth between "present day" and the past. One aspect that may be confusing is whether or not Chubb is crazy (or rather, how crazy), so it reads a bit like a psychological th More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jun 11, 2011
Mike
rated it:
Australian talespinner Carey wins points with this affecting and ingenious potboiler about a literary feud gone sour, set in a sinister southeast Asian backwater. These days, of course, it's hard to believe that a hoax concerning poets and their publication in literary journals would merit anything more than a yawn, let alone a career-ending, suicide-inducing succès de scandale; yet such is the bygone literary world that Carey invokes, with a combination of pathos and glamour. The narrative drag
More...
Jul 07, 2011
Stephanie
rated it:
A weird but compelling story of a hoax coming to life, or at least appearing to. It's like a modern Frankenstein story, with a strange mix of characters and a lot of mystery. It's a little on the poncy side sometimes and is heavily peppered with literary references - probably very interesting for some, but it added little for me.
It's never completely obvious exactly how much is meant to be real, how much magical, and how much the product of insanity - but whatever your interpretation More...
It's never completely obvious exactly how much is meant to be real, how much magical, and how much the product of insanity - but whatever your interpretation More...
Oct 27, 2011
Marsha
rated it: 
This is based on a true story about a literary hoax that made fools of some prominent literary snobs. I suspect this book is a bit of a literary hoax itself, intended to poke fun at literary snobs in general. If you read it with that understanding, it is hilarious. Dropped names are more plentiful than cow piles on a Tennessee farm and the plot gets so thick you could stand a utility pole in it. I enjoyed Carey's style. As crazy as it got, it was never boring. However, if you expect resolu
More...
Aug 23, 2010
Jill
rated it:
This book was dreadfully slow going for me. It's far too artistically written for my taste. Reminds me somewhat of The Sound and The Fury in its avant-garde stylistics (which drive me nuts!) Then of course we have our token homosexual characters. I'm not sure I really knew what was going on half the time. There are three reasons for this: 1) way too many pronouns to keep track of which one refers to whom; 2) no quotations marks to speak of - just dialogue thrown all over the place, marked on
More...
Dec 31, 2009
Megan
rated it:
What a strange, fantastic book. The characters are rich and interesting. Particularly adorable is the narrator, Sarah. She is so incredibly unlikeable, snobbish and boring yet somehow also sympathetic and terribly human. Carey had me laughing out loud at her awkward contradictions The story itself has such a strange setup and takes the reader to some very unexpected places, all for the love of poetry, and more specifically, Sarah's ambition to associate herself with the poetry of genius. I'll av
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jan 08, 2010
Farah
rated it:
Gue udah sampe entah pada halaman berapa. Gue memutuskan untuk ngga ngelanjutin baca. Kenapa? karena CAPEK.
Dari halaman ketiga, gue sadar bahwa buku ini ditulis tanpa bentuk kalimat aktif. Maksudnya, tanpa tanda koma dan tanda petik pada setiap ucapan para tokoh di buku ini.
Dan gue jadi capek. Karena gue jadi susah membedakan mana yang ucapan, mana yang kalimat cerita. Semuanya terasa lempeng dot kom.
Tapi gue paksain baca. Sampe pada cerita mengenai masa lalu More...
Dari halaman ketiga, gue sadar bahwa buku ini ditulis tanpa bentuk kalimat aktif. Maksudnya, tanpa tanda koma dan tanda petik pada setiap ucapan para tokoh di buku ini.
Dan gue jadi capek. Karena gue jadi susah membedakan mana yang ucapan, mana yang kalimat cerita. Semuanya terasa lempeng dot kom.
Tapi gue paksain baca. Sampe pada cerita mengenai masa lalu More...
11 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Aug 20, 2008
Philip
rated it:
My Life As A Fake by Peter Carey is a strange, multi-layered journey through a man’s past, his artistic inspiration and his products, both illusory and real. Christopher Chubb is Australian and a budding poet. He resents the privilege of a certain litterateur and so he decides to nail him. An apparently genuine but actually bogus set of poems is supplied and adjudged significantly more than competent. The agent publishes. The material is fake. Chubb is accused and stands trial for his sins again
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Oct 31, 2007
Justin
rated it:
The beginning of this book is painful and slow; I almost put it down after forty pages. It picks up after a little while and the story becomes inventive and unique, but overall the characters are flat, unsympathetic, and underdeveloped. The writing is dry and incongruent, meaning that the experimental approach to the dialogue is a good idea, but is poorly executed because of the conservative style. I hope that makes sense. They don't really fit together and instead force the reader to re-read ce
More...
Jul 19, 2010
Trent
rated it:
Not really sure how I feel about this book. I read it quickly. Over about 2 days. Not quite sure about the ending. I guess I was expecting something that could possibly explain the mystery of McCorkle's life. I wasn't expecting such a clear indication that McCorkle and Chubb were separate.
Was there a moral to the book? What comes of lies? How you can be consumed by the tale? Perhaps? It was nonetheless a good yarn, and I enjoyed it. I can't help but feel I'm missing something tho More...
Was there a moral to the book? What comes of lies? How you can be consumed by the tale? Perhaps? It was nonetheless a good yarn, and I enjoyed it. I can't help but feel I'm missing something tho More...
Jul 27, 2011
Once and a while you read a book that genuinely stirs you in the way that so many books try, but never quite manage. Peter Carey is a genuine master of storytelling and he spins an intricate and complex web of lies, literature and thwarted ambition. With each outrageous turn of the plot, the characters only become more compelling and believable. With each revelation, the fine line between truth and fabrication becomes more and more blurred. We are all liars in some way or another ....
Mar 04, 2011
Frances
rated it:
BORING!!! Does winning a Booker prize mean you can then write as much rubbish as you like and still get it on the bestseller list? Is sprinkling your story (and I use the term loosely) with poetry and references to the lives of poets all you have to do to be "literary"? If that's the case, that means I should be able to weave nursery rhymes into a bad narrative and have it hailed as great literature..... I don't think I'll waste any more of my precious time reading his books.
May 10, 2011
Eric
rated it:
The opening chapters of this novel begin with a poetry journal editor traveling to Kuala Lumpur. This is not a novel about going native or civilization meeting the third world. It's about far too many different plots to sum up in this surely much-anticipated goodreads return. A page-turner, with a very interesting afterword explaining Peter Carey's use of Ern Malley, a creation of two so-called anti-Modernist Australian authors in 1944, as the basis of this novel.
May 11, 2011
Jody
rated it:
I can't say this was a waste of time, but it was close. I never once cared one way or the other about Chubb or McCorkle, much less about Sarah or Slater. Unless you're simply interested in Kuala Lampur or Malaysia, this one is a pass.
---------
Changed my mind. After sleeping on it, I realized I'm pissed at this book. It had unlikable characters. It moved slowly. And I quote honestly just didn't care what happened. To top it all off, it was boring, a cardinal sin for a novel.
---------
Changed my mind. After sleeping on it, I realized I'm pissed at this book. It had unlikable characters. It moved slowly. And I quote honestly just didn't care what happened. To top it all off, it was boring, a cardinal sin for a novel.
Dec 19, 2011
Jamie
rated it:
Compelling and confounding, this is a well written tale of literary intrigue with characters that seem insane and actually might be, but that are so utterly themselves, thanks to Carey's writing, that you don't really care. It has a strong undercurrent of "Frankenstein" about it and a strange story spun in short chapters and different perspectives. I don't know if the absence of conventional quotation marks to signal dialogue is an Australian thing or not, but it definitely enhanced
More...
Apr 23, 2010
Stephanie
rated it:
Unfortunately, Bob McCorkle isn't the only fake thing in this book.
Disturbingly false is Carey's portrayal of artistic genius as supernatural zombie magic, instead of the 90% perspiration that it is.
And that even isn't as hollow as the notion that an old Chinese lady in a motorcycle shop in K.L. named Mrs. Lim must be a feral machete psychokiller.
Carey's plot is so convoluted that this isn't a spoiler.
Disturbingly false is Carey's portrayal of artistic genius as supernatural zombie magic, instead of the 90% perspiration that it is.
And that even isn't as hollow as the notion that an old Chinese lady in a motorcycle shop in K.L. named Mrs. Lim must be a feral machete psychokiller.
Carey's plot is so convoluted that this isn't a spoiler.
Aug 06, 2009
Marvin
rated it:
A poetry journal editor goes to Kuala Lampur for obscure reasons. There she meets the perpetrator of a literary hoax in Australia many years before. I quit before learning whether (& if so, how) he was misleading her, but I don't really care very much. I don't understand how someone who could write a book as wonderful as Oscar & Lucinda could so fail to engage me in several attempts since then.
Sep 16, 2011
Jocelyn
rated it:
This review is based on the audio version
This book has many elements that I usually enjoy: clever, literate characters, 'exotic' (to me) locations, adventure, suspense. So,I can't figure out why getting through the book felt like a chore rather than a joy. The audiobook narration was skillful, so that wasn't the problem.
The story is based on an famous Australian literary hoax perpetrated by an anti-modernist. The Frankenstein quote is a clue to one of the themes. Pe More...
This book has many elements that I usually enjoy: clever, literate characters, 'exotic' (to me) locations, adventure, suspense. So,I can't figure out why getting through the book felt like a chore rather than a joy. The audiobook narration was skillful, so that wasn't the problem.
The story is based on an famous Australian literary hoax perpetrated by an anti-modernist. The Frankenstein quote is a clue to one of the themes. Pe More...
Feb 16, 2011
Dian
rated it:
sumfah, eke ga ngerti isi buku ini, klu ada yng udah baca trus ngerti, plis tell me.. kenapa saya ga ngerti? soalnya ini adalah novel pertama yang saya baca tanpa ada tanda " di setiap obrolan tokoh2 yang ada di cerita ini.. jadi saya bingung sendiri sama ceritanya, "kalimat ini siapa yang ngomong? kalimat ini tokoh mana yang punya..?" yah.. seperti itulah pas baca buku ini..
