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The Chemistry of Tears

3.01 of 5 stars 3.01 · rating details · 1,544 ratings · 379 reviews

An automaton, a man and a woman who can never meet, two stories of love—all are brought to incandescent life in this hauntingly moving novel from one of the finest writers of our time.

London 2010: Catherine Gehrig, conservator at the Swinburne museum, learns of the sudden death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man, she must struggl...more

Hardcover, 232 pages

Published May 15th 2012 by Knopf (first published January 1st 2012)

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Apr 18, 2012 ·Karen· rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australia-nz, favourites

A hardback. I don't normally do hardbacks, but this was a birthday present to myself.

Hardbacks do feel nice though don't they? It's a pity the appearance of this one is spoilt by a really sappy cover picture that makes it look like a Tasteful Ladies' Romance. Which it is not. Needless to say.

I wish they'd used one of the perfectly splendiferous (false!) illustrations of Vaucanson's Duck:

Or this spiffy Drais:

Also needless to say it's bleeding brilliant, it is Peter Carey after all. Well, OK, he...more A hardback. I don't normally do hardbacks, but this was a birthday present to myself.

Hardbacks do feel nice though don't they? It's a pity the appearance of this one is spoilt by a really sappy cover picture that makes it look like a Tasteful Ladies' Romance. Which it is not. Needless to say.

I wish they'd used one of the perfectly splendiferous (false!) illustrations of Vaucanson's Duck:

Or this spiffy Drais:

Also needless to say it's bleeding brilliant, it is Peter Carey after all. Well, OK, he can turn in the occasional turkey, but this is a true swan, just as in the novel the ugly duckling turns out to be a beautiful swan. He's done that trick again of taking the historical and weaving it into the present in a way that illuminates both. This time it takes the form of a set of notebooks from 1854 that are found along with the various component parts of an automaton that Catherine, a horologist at London's Swinburne Museum, is to catalogue and reconstruct, a task given to her as a form of grief management. Carey points to the wonder of machines, how they can be the purest expression of all that is noble in the human mind; creativity and an ambitious desire to overcome our shortcomings, how they can comfort in their regularity and predictability, and yet at the same time they can be the portent of our demise, as illustrated by webcam images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that pump through the pages. This idea of creating a facsimile of life that is so central to the whole story can also be seen as a metaphor for the process of writing a novel, so there's another level along with the question of reading, of owning a text, as we see Catherine reading Brandling's journal, indeed stealing it to do so, and being consumed by jealousy when she thinks that her assistant has had privileged access to what she felt was hers and hers alone. Who gets hold of the story and how that affects the truth.
And another thing that Carey does so well is that delicious wry humour. This is not nearly as exuberant as Parrot and Olivier in America, it has to be more sombre as Catherine is in the most devastating form of grief. She has lost her married lover, suddenly and without even knowing, at first, how and where it happened. There is no comfort for her, no sympathetic hugs or process of leave-taking at the funeral. And yet she is more than a little ridiculous in her distraction, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the hapless Brandling, hilariously and pompously at sea in a culture and language that he does not understand. Indeed nearly every one of the characters is skeetering close to the edge of madness, toes on the edge of the abyss. Laughable and tragic, both.

And what is it that differentiates us from machines? Our bodies also function like a mechanical system, producing digestive juices and tears that contain hormones that reduce stress and act as a painkiller. That concentration on the illusion of life, the life-like quality of the mechanical swan's movement, brings into sharp focus where the difference lies: "The skin is the largest sensory organ of the body. It contains more than four million receptors. It is our skin that lets us feel the gentle blowing of air, our lover caressing our body. Our skin experiences our reading too, or at least it did in my case: covering me in goose bumps as I read..." Oh yes, me too, Mr Carey, me too.

And now that I've read and reviewed and dusted, this can go and join all the other Careys. At which point I see why I normally don't do hardbacks. They are too big to slot into the Billys that I have fitted out with extra shelves. Dang.(less)

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Oct 22, 2012 Melody rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Pat Clotfelter

Recommended to Melody by: Brian Johnson

Shelves: third-thursday-bookgroup, fiction, favorites

I am usually so hard on books. I don't know why. But it doesn't take much to make me lop off a star. But this one I forgave, (although I didn't have to forgive much). I felt so protective of the characters and the story and forgave the fact that there are some things I still don't get.
This is a story of love and hope. Of the inherent good and evil in all things. Of connection. Of separation. Of the past and the present.
The automaton represents the beginning of the machine age. An invitation to...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-fiction

The Chemistry of Tears is the story of an horologist, Catherine Gehrig, who works in a small London museum. Her lover, Matthew, one of the museum other curators, has just died suddenly and she is distraught. To take her mind off her grief her boss gives her a new job, to restore a mysterious automaton, which may or may not be a replica of Vaucanson's Duck. It arrives in her studio in eight gigantic tea-chests and amongst the myriad of broken parts she finds the diaries of its former owner, a Vic...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars

3 and 1/2 stars

I read Carey's "Oscar and Lucinda" with an online group many years ago and I'm wishing I could've done the same with this, my second of his novels. Though I recognize his many merits, I'm just not sure Carey is for me.

I was reminded of Oscar as I read about Henry. Both are men who find themselves on a strange journey in a strange place due to an obsession, obsessions that border on madness and have to do with the building of a folly at the intersection of Art and Science. Henry is...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Amy Warrick rated it 1 of 5 stars

Peter Carey, what is this??? You're all over the map here, nothing makes sense, nobody is likable, I am just...incapable of getting this book. It started out promising, woman gets over grief in re-assembling automaton, story of automaton told in alternate chapters, and then, it dissolves into pixels the way my DVR playback does sometimes.

I understand you're a genius and I thought we had a future. We are just too different.

p.s. loved Oscar & Lucinda

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May 08, 2012 Sophie added it

Absolutely stunning story, and beautifully written. Links in strangely well with 'Hugo' (film), and also with 'The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet' in some weird and wonderful way.

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May 26, 2013 WJ rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish

The Chemistry of Tears is the first book by Peter Carey that I've tried to read. I said 'tried to read' because I actually didn't manage to finish the book. I found the blurb to be quite interesting although I didn't know much about automatons, museum work or about nineteenth century Germany. I wanted to find out more about how Henry and Catherine's two worlds will be linked and was fully prepared to be sympathetic towards Catherine.

However, The Chemistry of Tears didn't work out the way I expec...more The Chemistry of Tears is the first book by Peter Carey that I've tried to read. I said 'tried to read' because I actually didn't manage to finish the book. I found the blurb to be quite interesting although I didn't know much about automatons, museum work or about nineteenth century Germany. I wanted to find out more about how Henry and Catherine's two worlds will be linked and was fully prepared to be sympathetic towards Catherine.

However, The Chemistry of Tears didn't work out the way I expected. Catherine's said to have been a logical, calm person but her lover's death has unraveled her and made her into an emotional wreck. Indeed she was absolutely awful to everyone, even her boss who's tried to help her find a placement in the Annexe where she will not have to face her other colleagues. Instead she grumbles and moans about the Annexe and doesn't appreciate how kind he has been to her. The affair doesn't appear to have been as well-hidden as the blurb suggests because her boss knows all about it. In fact it wasn't as though Catherine did not have a confidante about her affair, she could have spoken to her boss who had been very understanding about the whole thing.

I was willing to put aside Catherine's horrible attitude because I did like Henry's story. His total belief and fervor regarding the duck and how it would help his son to feel better was incredibly sad because he was simply grasping at the straws. His adventure and mis-communication with the Germans was far more compelling than Catherine's emotional mess and her attitude. However, his story soon took a weird turn as well. I didn't understand anything that was happening between him and the Germans and when that new character appeared and offered to help him, I was so fed up that I really couldn't care about these characters anymore.

There are a few things that I look out for in every book that I read: compelling storyline, characters that I can feel empathetic about and good writing. The Chemistry of Tears had already failed on the first two accounts, seeing as how I didn't like Catherine very much and after a while, couldn't care about Henry's adventure to commission the automaton for his son. In terms of writing, Peter Carey has crafted a confusing tale. I didn't understand what was going on most of the time (and it wasn't for the want of effort).

I wished I could have enjoyed The Chemistry of Tears far more and that I could have found it in me to finish the book. Unfortunately I don't think it's something that I will return to and I doubt that I will read another book by Peter Carey again. (less)

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May 06, 2013 Ben Thurley rated it 3 of 5 stars

Two intertwining stories of love in the face of loss, that of Catherine a horologist and museum conservator whose lover has just died as the novel opens and the love-story between a man and his dying(?) son which she painstakingly reconstructs, literally, from the Nineteenth Century notebooks of Henry Brandling and the clockwork automaton his patronage had inspired as a cure for his son's suffering.

The characters are surrounded by others who like Catherine's assistant and nemesis Amanda, or the...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Emily Harring rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really wanted to like this book. I should love this book, as the blurb on the back makes it sound exactly like the sort of novel I would not only pick up to read once, but return to again and again.

Sadly, this is not the case.

The book centers around Catherine Gehrig, a conservator at a London museum, who tries to deal with the grief of losing her lover. As she grapples with this grief, her boss entrusts her with a mechanical bird he wants her to restore. The crates bearing the different parts...more I really wanted to like this book. I should love this book, as the blurb on the back makes it sound exactly like the sort of novel I would not only pick up to read once, but return to again and again.

Sadly, this is not the case.

The book centers around Catherine Gehrig, a conservator at a London museum, who tries to deal with the grief of losing her lover. As she grapples with this grief, her boss entrusts her with a mechanical bird he wants her to restore. The crates bearing the different parts also include a set of ten notebooks written by the man who commissioned the bird to be built for his ill son. The reader, then, gets chapters from the point-of-view of Catherine, the man (Henry Brandling), and a mixture of the two. As the back of the book states, "Through the clockwork bird, Henry and Catherine will confront the mysteries of creation, the power of human invention, and the body's astonishing chemistry of love and feeling." Sounds awesome, right?

The book had so much potential. Its first mistake comes from the fact that the mechanical bird, easily the most interesting aspect of the novel, becomes completely overshadowed by domestic issues. There is far less of the restoration process and an excess of Catherine's problems, which I really couldn't be bothered to care about. I had a difficult time connecting with Catherine. Henry was quite a charming character, and I thought his motivation to construct the bird was endearing, but both of them could use more complexity behind their actions. Soon enough, how they felt just became repetitious and I stopped seeing character growth. As someone who adores character novels, I would have liked the novel more if the characters had been given more room to grow. This was a character novel, but not a well executed one.

The level of absurdity within the novel was maddening, as well. I can't begin to understand the motives behind Eric (who needs a hobby so he stops interfering with other people's business) and Amanda. Neither of them made any sense to me at all and their actions constantly disoriented me and took me out of the novel.

I enjoyed the fairy tale aspect of the novel, but it could have been built up a bit more. Some of the prose was also quite beautiful and clear.

What ultimately maddened me the most and is the reason I only gave the novel two stars was the end. I felt that the text hadn't earned the last twenty or so pages. The question of human existence and other worlds hadn't been prevalent throughout the novel, then it was suddenly shoved into the narration and made to be this huge deal. It wasn't clear what it brought to the overall story arch and what its purpose was within the space of the novel. Were there interesting questions brought up? Yes. These questions weren't developed, though, and could have been developed a lot better.

Thus, not a book I enjoyed. It's tolerable at parts, but holistically there are far too many character and plot holes to make me want to read this book again.(less)

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Apr 03, 2013 Annie M rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Catherine Gehrig, a museum expert in clockwork, is given an automaton to restore to help with her unexpected and unacknowledgeable grief over the death of her long-time lover and co-worker. Her misery is palatable and slightly unhinged and Carey draws us in to this grief magnificently. All of us have experienced grief of some sort, and at first we understand it, but then somehow her reactions disturb.

A parallel narrative is told by Henry, the patron responsible for the construction of the automa...more Catherine Gehrig, a museum expert in clockwork, is given an automaton to restore to help with her unexpected and unacknowledgeable grief over the death of her long-time lover and co-worker. Her misery is palatable and slightly unhinged and Carey draws us in to this grief magnificently. All of us have experienced grief of some sort, and at first we understand it, but then somehow her reactions disturb.

A parallel narrative is told by Henry, the patron responsible for the construction of the automaton during the early 19th century. We get to hear his story, which is also grounded in grief, through Catherine's reading of his journals. As you can see, grief circles around and colors everything in this novel. Carey is a master at the complex--somtimes too much so. Grief is everywhere: loss of a lover, a marriage, children, innocence, youth, spirituality, even the planet. The Swan signals the beginning of the scientific age and the combustible engine, which cumulates in the oil spill in the Gulf that Amanda grieves.

Carey hints in the title, the chemistry of tears, that the two worlds, the scientific/logical/intellectual on the one hand and the emotional/spiritual on the other are both part of our humanity. All the characters are treading close to the edge of sanity--is that Carey commenting? I agree with A.S. Byatt in her review of the novel, "This is not an easy book to read. I was haunted throughout by the sense of a pattern of ideas that I couldn't grasp...It is a unique combination of raw human passion and complicated puzzling about human ingenuity." I felt the same way. But Peter Carey is a genius. He always leaves me thinking. Are we condemned to a mechanical non-feeling world? I believe Carey shows us differently at the end of the novel:

...our essence is enveloped by the largest sensory organ, a universe itself, our human skin...Machines cannot feel, it is commonly believed. Souls have no chemistry, and time cannot end...Mysterium Tremendum...

Brilliant, Mr. Peter Carey, just brilliant.(less)

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Feb 10, 2013 Gael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Really odd. I think I would need to read this again to make sense of it - but I haven't got time, there are other books waiting.

Maybe we're not meant to make sense of it. Early on in the book, Carey writes, "It was not yet raining, but the sky was black and bleeding like a Rothko.". And near the end Catherine is talking to Eric (is Eric Croft actually Carey himself?) about wanting to solve a mystery, and Eric says, "Without ambiguity you have Agatha Christie, a sort of aesthetic ambiguity. But l...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Laysee rated it 3 of 5 stars

Written by two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Chemistry of Tears is a cleverly complex novel that revolved around a mechanical duck. In Peter Carey’s hands, the duck was to blossom into a beautiful swan and invested with hopes of healing for two characters in two different time spans.

Carey brilliantly built a modern day tale of grief on a historical artifact – a drawing of an automaton digesting duck by Jacque de Vaucanson, an eighteenth century inventor. The structure of the novel was...more Written by two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Chemistry of Tears is a cleverly complex novel that revolved around a mechanical duck. In Peter Carey’s hands, the duck was to blossom into a beautiful swan and invested with hopes of healing for two characters in two different time spans.

Carey brilliantly built a modern day tale of grief on a historical artifact – a drawing of an automaton digesting duck by Jacque de Vaucanson, an eighteenth century inventor. The structure of the novel was interestingly time-layered. Two narrators who lived 150 years apart were united in their quest to assemble an automaton creature: Catherine Gehrig, a horology conservator (2010) and Henry Brandling, a wealthy Englishman (1854). Carey told a story about Catherine who told a story about Henry who told a story about life in the Victorian age.

The story opened promisingly enough. Catherine was in deep throes of uncontainable grief when her secret lover of 13 years died suddenly. To distract and comfort her, her kindly boss assigned her a project, which was to label, restore and reconstruct a 150-year-old automaton swan. The parts came in eight tea chests along with several notebooks supposedly written by Henry who had commissioned the construction of the mechanical “duck” as the ultimate toy that would enliven his ailing son (Percy).

Henry’s quest took the reader on a journey to Black Forest, south of Karlsruhe, Germany, the land of the master cuckoo clock maker. There was no want of crazed geniuses or charlatans, each with their own agenda and lofty visions of the perfect automaton. As far as the basic story line went, I was eager to find out if Henry’s duck would materialize and if it would reach Percy in time to save him. I also needed to know if Catherine and her competitive intern would get along and succeed in assembling the swan. I enjoyed the moment in the novel, which described the swan’s resurrection. It was beautifully captured and extremely thrilling.

However, I suspect this is only half of Carey’s tale. There is more than meets the eye. There was much in the notebooks and in the intern’s obsession with getting to the mystery of the automaton swan that suggested that Carey intended something more. Henry's notebooks were not easy to read. The Philistine in me had no affinity with cogs and wheels and lifeless things that spin, much less defecate. The “mysterious tremendum” that Carey alluded to was wasted on me. Mentioned at least twice toward the close of the novel was this Latin phrase, “Illud aspicis non vides”, which meant “You cannot see what you can see.” This made my reading of this novel less satisfying than I would like it to be. For now I can live with the ambiguity. Someday, perhaps, I may revisit and hopefully see what I should see.
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Nov 05, 2012 Everyday eBook rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Everyday by: Andrew Agudo

In his latest novel, The Chemistry of Tears, Peter Carey sifts through the mechanics of anguish and clockwork in search of recovery in times and places where unnatural tragedies riddle humanity.

Catherine Gehrig has only just heard the news: Matthew Tindall, Swinburne Museum's head curator of metal, is dead of a heart attack. Maybe this sounds terribly mundane, but that's not the case. Catherine was not only his coworker -- she’s a horologist -- but also, for the last thirteen years, his secret l...more In his latest novel, The Chemistry of Tears, Peter Carey sifts through the mechanics of anguish and clockwork in search of recovery in times and places where unnatural tragedies riddle humanity.

Catherine Gehrig has only just heard the news: Matthew Tindall, Swinburne Museum's head curator of metal, is dead of a heart attack. Maybe this sounds terribly mundane, but that's not the case. Catherine was not only his coworker -- she’s a horologist -- but also, for the last thirteen years, his secret lover. This secret, Catherine thinks, rests now with her alone, but as she drinks her way through bereavement her boss Eric Croft reveals that he knows of their affair; what's more, Crofty (as he's fondly called) has a new project for her: to preserve and reconstruct an old automaton duck (which turns out to actually be a swan). When Catherine walks into her office, she finds, among boxes of metal mechanics and glass tubes, a stack of notebooks. They're full of journal entries, which Catherine can't help but read -- and so we're introduced to Mr. Henry Brandling.

Henry Brandling is a rich Englishman of the nineteenth century, and a devoted father to a dying son. Always trying to promote recovery, Henry intrigues and engages his son's mind, but despite minor success it's not enough; such engagements lack staying power. So when Henry gets his hands on a mysterious blueprint for an automaton duck, he goes to great lengths, ultimately traveling to the German countryside to have it built for his son. Henry records his journey in notebooks, the same notebooks Catherine finds, and reads, over a century later. Indeed, she is enthralled by them; when she can't finish them in her office, she steals the notebooks and reads comfortably in her flat. Henry Brandling's story becomes a salve for her trauma, a distant prescription from the past.

The Chemistry of Tears jumps between Catherine and Henry's narratives. In each, time and space and tone are very different; Catherine's is based in strict reality, while Henry's appears more whimsical, more unreal. (This is best exemplified by the automaton itself; its technology is anachronistic.) Yet, the two are still linked together by the automaton and notebooks. And in the end, whether in Catherine's world or Henry's, Carey uniquely explores the mechanics of not just grief, but human nature, juxtaposing raw human emotion with the cold metal pieces of an automaton, and ultimately linking them when the swan is rebuilt and comes to life, every function working just right, every movement lifelike.

Peter Carey is the author of many other novels, including Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, both of which won the Man Booker Prize.

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Oct 28, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 1 of 5 stars

If you like whiny adultresses whose lover has died and indirect storytelling lapsing into bizarre unwelcome philosophizing then this is the book for you. In the beginning I disliked the adulteress living in current times but I liked the journal entries written by a 19th century man. Then, as the story progressed and the man was confused by his interactions with the German townspeople where he hoped to have an automaton built and those interactions were never explained and instead the man's journ...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature-fiction

While there tends to be an OVERDOSE of "tears" in the book, I found myself drawn to the alternating narrators. The first, Catherine Gehrig, is a horologist in London, who has lost her long time lover and cannot cope. A friend gives her a mysterious project of restoring whatever eight chests hold. She finds, along with all the mechanical parts of an automaton, the notebooks of Henry Brandling, the mid 19th century owner of the contents of the chests.

The books continues by alternating chapters bet...more While there tends to be an OVERDOSE of "tears" in the book, I found myself drawn to the alternating narrators. The first, Catherine Gehrig, is a horologist in London, who has lost her long time lover and cannot cope. A friend gives her a mysterious project of restoring whatever eight chests hold. She finds, along with all the mechanical parts of an automaton, the notebooks of Henry Brandling, the mid 19th century owner of the contents of the chests.

The books continues by alternating chapters between Catherine and Henry, whose story of how the automaton came into being carries the reader into the grief of a father trying to entertain an ill son. Henry's LONG travels into the clockwork makers of Germany are recounted in the notebooks, which Catherine reads avidly.

The watchmaker he finds, Sumper, isn't interested in Henry's mundane request for a duck automaton that can eat and defecate. He envelopes Henry in the Grimm's fairytale atmosphere of the Black Forest and is almost a bully, telling Henry that Sumper will build him something much grander than a duck, and sharing with Henry the vision of Sumper's mentor, Cruickshank (a character clearly modeled on the great Charles Babbage,whose prototype computer, the Difference Engine, has been reconstructed at the Science Museum in London).

Here's a quote from Andrew Miller's review in the NY Times, May 25, 2012:

"It is here, perhaps, in the watchmaker’s hallucinogenic parable, that we come to what Carey is playing with in this novel: the illusory versus the actual, the mechanical versus the organic. The gap, if any, between that which, in its complexity, imitates life, and that which is living and may possess something else, something that isn’t simply part of the works. A soul! Carey, of course, isn’t going to come down on one side or the other of this venerable debate. Instead, he puts into the mouth of Catherine’s boss the still persuasive Romantic plea for ambiguity, for the power and beauty of mysteries, for defending these from “analytical clarities.” The closing scenes, in which Catherine and her young assistant finally recreate what Henry Brandling brought back from the forest, are among the best in the book, and the moment when it — the not-a-duck — is set in motion is thrilling."

That last sentence is so true--the closing scenes made the entire book worth the read! I was entranced to find youtube entries of the silver swan automaton at the Bowes Museum in England--well worth the sight! When Mark Twain saw the swan at the World's Fair in Paris in 1867, he exclaimed:

"I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes-watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as it he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop - watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it..."

The idea of the automaton (also the center of THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET) left me wondering if humans now have the ability, with cloning, to create biological automatons--and THEN the question of whether THOSE constructs have "souls" becomes even more poignant.

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Aug 30, 2012 Robotbee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: amazing

I bought this book as a birthday gift for a friend, for whom I initially had felt very clever buying 'The People of the Book.' Turns out she already had it, bless my eavesdropping heart.

Well, I had read a review of 'The Chemistry of Tears' that was sent to me by Amazon.com, which is terrifyingly good at guessing what I will like, and it occurred to me that my friend, who is not only Jewish and generally artsy (hence 'the People of the Book') but also, more specifically, has spent time interning...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Sharon rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those books where the title is an attempt to hint at the author's intent for writing the book. The main story takes place in 2010 but there is a parallel story taking place in the 19C. Catherine Gehrig is a horologist at a London museum who restores antique clocks and automatons. She is in the midst of being paralyzed by grief as her secret lover of 13 years suddenly dies, and so she is assigned a project to keep her away from everyone for awhile. The project arrives packed in pie...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Kathleen Serracino-inglott rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wish I could give this four and a half stars. The book is about a grieving clock-repairer (horologist) who is asked to repair an intricate automaton (think steam punk). As such there are two strands to the story, with the modern day horologist reading the letters of the gentleman who commissioned the automaton. Repairing the automaton takes her through the grieving process which is well-written and and the author contrasts the "fish out of water" experiences on bothe side of the historical div...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Antenna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Employed as a conservator at a London museum with a world-famous collection of clocks and wind-up machines, blue-stocking Catherine is grief-stricken over the death of her work colleague and not-so-secret lover Matthew. Her manipulative line manager Eric tries to distract her with the task of reassembling what seems to be a mechanical duck, commissioned in the 1850s by the wealthy (when he is allowed access to the family money) Henry Brandling, who is convinced the "automaton" will aid the recov...more Employed as a conservator at a London museum with a world-famous collection of clocks and wind-up machines, blue-stocking Catherine is grief-stricken over the death of her work colleague and not-so-secret lover Matthew. Her manipulative line manager Eric tries to distract her with the task of reassembling what seems to be a mechanical duck, commissioned in the 1850s by the wealthy (when he is allowed access to the family money) Henry Brandling, who is convinced the "automaton" will aid the recovery of his sickly son. Catherine becomes totally absorbed in the handwritten journals kept by the eccentric Henry on his lengthy trip to Germany to obtain the duck.

The "Catherine chapters" held my attention from the outset. I liked the acerbic take on Barbara Pym "voice", and the very convincing and often moving portrayal of how Catherine is devastated by loss which Carey manages to convey alongside some very entertaining scenes.

The Henry chapters were a different matter. I accept that he may be bordering on insane, and encounters some even nuttier people, in particular the automaton-maker Sumper with his for me tedious accounts of the perhaps even more eccentric designer of such machines, Cruickshank. These chapters have a dreamlike quality, verging at times on nightmare, and Henry's account is often fragmented and lacking in context.

I would have been totally at sea without Google to explain the Victorian obsession with automata, and the various references to smoking monkeys and Vaucanson's "Digesting Duck" plus the Silver Swan on view at Bowes Museum, all of which clearly inspired this novel.

I think Carey is exploring the incongruity, for atheists and rationalists, of how grief is expressed through the chemical reactions of, say, shedding tears, while a cleverly made robotic machine may arouse fear and confusion with "its uncanny lifelike movements". An added twist is how machines, especially the combustion engine, have transformed our lives but may lead to our destruction by pollution - including this aspect as well may be over-ambitious.

Only the relative shortness of this book, Carey's status as a twice Man Booker Prize Winner, and my admiration for his recent "Parrot and Olivier in America" gave me the incentive to persevere. I agree that the ending proves rather abrupt, plus for me it includes a couple of implausible twists which I found hard to take.

I can see why some reviewers have found the novel pretentious. I'm inclined to think that Carey simply lets his imagination roam free, his fame relieving him of any need to kowtow to agents or editors. He makes no concessions to readers, leaving us to extract the brilliant writing and sharp insights (for which I give the 4 stars) from the at times confusing morass.

It was only on reflection after finishing the book that I decided the choice of ending is quite effective, and that overall it is worth reading. (less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Nicola rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reason for Reading: Peter Carey's True History of the Kelley Gang is one of my all time favourite books and I've always meant to read another by the author. With this latest book coming out, the time period and the automata piqued my interest enough to decide to give him another go at this time.

I'm not even going to try and analyze just what the hidden, under the surface meanings are in this story, there are plenty but it gives me a headache looking at this book that way. I just want to read it...more Reason for Reading: Peter Carey's True History of the Kelley Gang is one of my all time favourite books and I've always meant to read another by the author. With this latest book coming out, the time period and the automata piqued my interest enough to decide to give him another go at this time.

I'm not even going to try and analyze just what the hidden, under the surface meanings are in this story, there are plenty but it gives me a headache looking at this book that way. I just want to read it and enjoy a good story. Read it I did but I only found a mediocre story. We start off on the first page meeting the main character, an adulteress, with no redeeming qualities. Her married lover has just died and she is totally wrapped up in herself. She has no cares for his children, whom he loved dearly and we learn that she often was jealous of them. She is quite younger than this man and her life seems to have existed for their relationship together, and her job as an horologist at a museum secondly. That's all, no friends, no family. Catherine, or Cat, as she is commonly called is given a project to restore to help her with her grief by the only person at the museum who knew about her affair.

The text alternates between Catherine in the present dealing with her grief, possessiveness and selfishness as she becomes somewhat obsessive over the automata that she and a young assistant, whom she dislikes and distrusts, are working on. Cat is also reading through the ledgers/journals that came packed with the assemblage which gives us the other view. Henry Blanding tells his story set in the 1850s of how he came to a strange little German town and had an even stranger man build his clockwork duck for him. His journal is written to his young son whom he promised this prized possession in hopes that it would make him well, as he is a sickly boy, most likely consumptive. Henry also is not a rather likable fellow. His wife has refused relations with him, denied to care for their son, since their first child, a daughter died the same way. She is loveless to them and Henry is pathetic in his attempts to be all and do all for this cold woman who brings in an artistic crowd to their house to have her portraits painted. Henry is eventually persuaded to leave the house, his search to make the automata his pretence for leaving. While unlike Catherine, Henry does slowly change throughout the book, for the most part he is a weak man, easily taken advantage of, of superior mind of course being an Englishman, and emotionally volatile.

There is more to say, but I shan't go on. The basic plot of the two stories was entertaining to read, the writing naturally superb, and I had no problem getting though the book quickly; I'm sure its short length helped matters though. But I had no connection to any of the characters, not liking them, nor caring what happened to them in the end. Not everyone is sane in this story and it's up to the reader to decide who is or isn't sane. Perhaps they are all off their rockers. The ending does little to satisfy this reader.(less)

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Jul 31, 2012 A.M. O'Malley rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book in less than 24-hours, devoured it. Unfortunately for me that is only half the battle of being a good book. I devour lots of garbage--that doesn't make it good.

Let me back up, sometimes I think that I am Peter Carey's only fan, or maybe just his biggest fan. I stumbled upon 'The True Story of the Kelly Gang' about five years ago and have since read all twelve of his novels. Each book he writes is different from the next in terms of plot, setting and motivations--which I think is...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Jillwilson rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book opens with a scene about grief and death - the main female character has just learnt that her lover of 13 years has died. Because their relationship is hidden, her grief must also be contained. It is a scenario of great resonance and interest to me. And Carey initially manages the emotions well, though the novel quickly flies into the world of the intellect and stays pretty firmly there. As with many of his novels, he is very taken with the following: “History’s hard done by – innocent...more This book opens with a scene about grief and death - the main female character has just learnt that her lover of 13 years has died. Because their relationship is hidden, her grief must also be contained. It is a scenario of great resonance and interest to me. And Carey initially manages the emotions well, though the novel quickly flies into the world of the intellect and stays pretty firmly there. As with many of his novels, he is very taken with the following: “History’s hard done by – innocents abroad, outlaws, orphans and underdogs – are Carey’s favourite characters, and he enjoys allowing them control of the narration, wresting it from pompous authority. Fakes and forgers also abound. Who gets hold of the story and how that affects the truth is at the crux of his novels.” (www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/boo...)

The novel is divided into two somewhat parallel stories occupying different time periods and intersecting. The modern plotline is quite simple and straightforward; the historical narrative obtuse, far-ranging and at times odd. For me, it didn’t quite work – though you have to admire the way Carey challenges himself as a novelist. He was apparently inspired by seeing this mechanical swan at the Bowes museum in England: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9dcg-.... It is the fore-runner of robots and artificial intelligence. In some ways, this is what the novel is about – the impact of technology, but it also tries to be about the question of what makes us human. This review sums up this focus: “It is here, perhaps, in the watchmaker’s hallucinogenic parable, that we come to what Carey is playing with in this novel: the illusory versus the actual, the mechanical versus the organic. The gap, if any, between that which, in its complexity, imitates life, and that which is living and may possess something else, something that isn’t simply part of the works. A soul!” (www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/books/revi...)

Finally, some interesting facts about tears:
“Emotional tears are composed of more protein based hormones, such as prolactin, andrenocorticotropic, and leucine enkephalin (a natural pain killer), which is why crying from emotion often makes you feel better.” And “In a research conducted by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, emotional tears from women have been found to reduce sexual arousal in men. Emotional tears are made up of a different chemical component than those evoked by eye irritants and can relay chemical messages to others.[12] The change in sex drive could be attributed to the drop in testosterone provoked by the chemicals in the tears meant to reduce aggression. In the animal world, it has been found that some blind mole rats would rub tears all over their bodies as a strategy to keep aggressive mole rats away.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears)
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Jul 20, 2012 Dulwichbooks rated it 2 of 5 stars

Carey’s latest novel has all the compelling fluency of the best of his works. Working with the same framework of “two voices and two era” of Parrot & Olivier In America he tells the tale two obsessives, each dysfunctional in their own way. Catherine Gehrig is a 21st century horologist, a museum conservator. Henry Brandling a mixed-up, not very bright, 19th century, father that goes to Germany to have a mechanical duck made for his desperately ill son.
Although the novel has the two voices we...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Well.

I will allow that this is probably an excellent book, written by an excellent author. Other reviews have noted that it might have been better to have read it with a book club, as insights would be gained by the comments of other readers.

That comment does make me feel a bit better, because I must admit to being thoroughly confused throughout most of this book. And, that is just not why I pick up a book to read. I like to understand what is going on in a story, I don't enjoy wondering what j...more Well.

I will allow that this is probably an excellent book, written by an excellent author. Other reviews have noted that it might have been better to have read it with a book club, as insights would be gained by the comments of other readers.

That comment does make me feel a bit better, because I must admit to being thoroughly confused throughout most of this book. And, that is just not why I pick up a book to read. I like to understand what is going on in a story, I don't enjoy wondering what just happened....what that meant.....

I have never read anything by this author. I picked this book out of the library because it sounded like a good tale. I knew absolutely nothing about automatons. Maybe it would have helped if I did, but since I don't understand how the simplest machines work, all the detail on the "mysterium tremendum" was lost on me! And, Catherine didn't grieve in a way I could empathise with. Her most secret affair was not secret after all, so she did have someone to talk with. She chose not to. So utterly consumed with love, why didn't they marry?? Someone who had worked in preservation her whole life would fling an antiquity across the room?? Why was she so sad while deleting his emails?? He had sent them all to her, hadn't he? Wouldn't everything received and everything send be on her own computer??

See? It is small stuff like this that just didn't fly. But, since he is a prize winning author, I must conclude that I just am not up to the task of reading and enjoying his books. Task?? Reading, to me, isn't supposed to be a task. Reading this book, while I did enjoy parts and soooo wanted to know what was going to be the final outcome, just wasn't satisfying. Am I the only person who wished to know if the duck that turned into a swan cured Percy?? I wanted to know that a lot more than I wanted to have it pointed out to me that machines may result in the extermination of mankind as we know it.

There. My conclusion--this guy writes wonderful books that I don't enjoy reading. But.....maybe......I will try another..... :-)

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Jun 26, 2012 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

After hearing Carey interviewed on NPR, I rushed out to get this book mostly because he had made reference to the fact that he believes that we continue to live with the consequences of the Industrial Revolution in innumerable ways. His wit and brilliance in the interview were reason enough to get the book. I read this and saw the film, Hugo, during the same week coincidentally and wondered how these two works of art could possibly have intersected in such interesting ways. This was definitely...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Cornmaven rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult

The two stories converge model was intriguing, but there was much about this novel that just didn't make sense to me. Grieving mistress confronts a 19th century automaton and its accompanying paperwork, given to her by her boss as way to help her through her grief.

The first problem is that, for me, Catherine was not a sympathetic character. I felt sorry for her for about the first 50 pages, then after that she became this immature drunk who felt the world revolved around her. I really liked Henr...more

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May 27, 2012 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS. (2012). Peter Carey. ***.
Carey is a native Australian, but has lived in New York for the past twenty years. He has won the Booker Prize twice – no mean feat. He is a meticulous writer and has a natural ability for choosing the right word for the right position. I think he has trouble, though, with choosing the right plots into which he wants to insert his thinking. In this novel, a woman curator of an horological museum in London learns that her married lover and co-work...more THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS. (2012). Peter Carey. ***.
Carey is a native Australian, but has lived in New York for the past twenty years. He has won the Booker Prize twice – no mean feat. He is a meticulous writer and has a natural ability for choosing the right word for the right position. I think he has trouble, though, with choosing the right plots into which he wants to insert his thinking. In this novel, a woman curator of an horological museum in London learns that her married lover and co-worker of thirteen years has just died. She is devestated. No one, it seems, knew about this affair other than her boss. In order to help her get through her grief, he assigns her a special project: restoring an automaton from the mid-nineteenth century. She ultimatly looks forward to the project, especially after she discovers a series of notebooks that were included with the various parts of the item. Presumably, the notebooks were the property of the original owner of the piece. The piece itself, she believes, is a duck or goose, which, through a series of levers and cams and other machined parts mimics the actions of the bird – even down to its digestion and excretory systems. She is mostly glad that it wasn’t a monkey. The piece had come down from its original owner who had it originally built as a present for his sick child. He felt that it would cheer him up and speed him on the way to recovery. The story alternates between these ‘journals’ and our restorer, both of whom were suffering from losses. The duck/goose could very well be the answer to both their problems. The major themes in this novel include grief and ways of alleviating it. In this case, the answer might lie in a mechanical unit that mimics life. The relationship between man and machine is also explored, though more directly by the original builders of the bird – craftsmen dwelling in the Black Forest in Germany. The characters in Germany take on a fairy tale quality and become symbols in themselves as they interact with their client. My only problem with the story is that it contains long sections that – to me – were boring. The author seemed to want to dive into a supernatural aspect of the machine’s manufacturer, but never quite crossed that line. The author seems to deal better with action figures than with philosophical plots. I was disappointed.
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May 25, 2012 Felicity rated it 3 of 5 stars

"The Chemistry of Tears" follows the trials of a grieving long-term mistress, Catherine Gehrig, who also happens to be an horologist and conservator at the Swinburne Museum in London. When her partner suddenly dies from a heart attack on the London tube, she finds herself bereft with the complicatiosn of her situation meaning that she is alone with her grief. In order to provide her with some comfort and privacy, her sympathetic boss provides her with a mechanical swan to reconstruct...and in th...more "The Chemistry of Tears" follows the trials of a grieving long-term mistress, Catherine Gehrig, who also happens to be an horologist and conservator at the Swinburne Museum in London. When her partner suddenly dies from a heart attack on the London tube, she finds herself bereft with the complicatiosn of her situation meaning that she is alone with her grief. In order to provide her with some comfort and privacy, her sympathetic boss provides her with a mechanical swan to reconstruct...and in the process of reconstructing the swan, Catherine seeks to find a way through her grief and reconstruct her life without her love. Parallel with Catherine's story is that of Henry Brandling, who originally commissioned the building of the swan in the mid-nineteenth century. Like Catherine, he is dealing with grief and loss, and he hopes the swan will bring joy into his surviving son's life.

"The Chemistry of Tears" is, after all, a Peter Carey novel and so giving it "only" three stars (considering some of my other rankings) seems, well, a little unfair. The quality of the writing is superb, and for that alone, Carey deserves five, even six stars. Clearly, I am in the hands of a master of his craft.

But...as enamored as I was by this story, ultimately I was unmoved. There seemed a little too much clever wordplay and at times, I felt like a bit of an idiot. Did I miss something? Was or is there some hidden meaning to this novel that readers in university seminars and tutorials for the next fifty years are going to dissect ad infinitium? Catherine's grief is immense and strong, which seems understandable, but her young assistant, Amanda, just seemed annoying, sometimes churlish, sometimes naive, and, at other times, extraordinarily insightful. Perhaps I'm just describing your average twenty-something. In the end, I felt shortchanged because I couldn't really empathize with or even like any of the the characters. I wanted to like them, but in the end, I just couldn't, not even the slightly more loveable and caring "Crofty" (Catherine's boss). What bothers me though is that I wonder if the reason I couldn't like them speaks to the paucity of my life experience, not the fact that they were generally unlikeable. And that final fact, I guess, makes me decidedly uncomfortable. (less)

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Feb 22, 2012 Angela rated it 1 of 5 stars

Disappointing for the latest book from such a significant writer. I've never been much of a fan of Carey, but this book is is even more disappointing than I expected. I was hopeful I would love it, as the subject matter was right up my alley. The plot is wonderful, a gift for any author - following the death of her secret lover, a antique watchmaker and antiquities specialist at the British museum is forced to grieve in complete silence lest her secret be discovered, until she learns some friend...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Donna rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was something else. Though what that something else was, I have no idea. I only know that it wasn't the something that I wanted it to be. Was it a meditation on how the past can destroy the future? Or how technology can destroy mankind? Or how we can learn from the past, but only if we can see what is before our eyes? Or a dozen or more of the ideas left squirming in my mind after reading this book? Don't ask me, ask the author--unless he is too busy writing another cryptic book such a...more This book was something else. Though what that something else was, I have no idea. I only know that it wasn't the something that I wanted it to be. Was it a meditation on how the past can destroy the future? Or how technology can destroy mankind? Or how we can learn from the past, but only if we can see what is before our eyes? Or a dozen or more of the ideas left squirming in my mind after reading this book? Don't ask me, ask the author--unless he is too busy writing another cryptic book such as this one.

It felt as if the author abandoned this story at the halfway mark to the whims of his characters' madness much as someone piloting a hot air balloon might allow the wind currents to control his destination. Back and forth in time went this hot air balloon of a story until it deflated and fell to earth in the end. That's my take on it.

I was hoping that this would be a life-giving story in which a grieving woman would be restored by rebuilding an automaton from the 1800's, an amazing piece a grieving father from the past had commissioned to restore his consumptive son. But it was not to be.

Too many people in this book were emotionally unstable. We have Catherine, the grieving lover of a married man with whom she had a seventeen year affair. She is obsessed with her now dead lover, same as her irrational assistant at the museum is obsessed with the oil spill in the Gulf. And we have hapless Henry, a man from the 1800's who is obsessed with bringing home to his ailing son the reproduction of an automaton he is certain will spark some life into the boy, poor Percy. And we have Sumper, the fanatical and frightening man he commissions to build the automaton, which was supposed to be a mechanical duck. But Sumper has his own ideas on what it should be. How is the reader to know or believe anything he reads with all these skewed viewpoints? And what is worse, there is no resolution to this story, past or present.

Now if I had been writing this book--how presumptuous is that, to second guess a two time winner of the Booker Prize?--the very least I would have done is resolve Henry's story from the past, one that the reader learns about through his detailed notebooks. I would have had Henry returning to his son, learning that Percy had only sent him off to build the automaton so that he would have something productive to do besides watch his son weaken. The automaton itself was not important, rather, what it represented, which was the love of a son for his father and the love of a father for his son. I would have had Percy stoically watch the automaton's grand performance only to turn to his father and simply say, "I am so glad you are here."

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About Peter Carey

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.

He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arriv...more Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943.

He was educated at the local state school until the age of eleven and then became a boarder at Geelong Grammar School. He was a student there between 1954 and 1960 — after Rupert Murdoch had graduated and before Prince Charles arrived.

In 1961 he studied science for a single unsuccessful year at Monash University. He was then employed by an advertising agency where he began to receive his literary education, meeting Faulkner, Joyce, Kerouac and other writers he had previously been unaware of. He was nineteen.

For the next thirteen years he wrote fiction at night and weekends, working in many advertising agencies in Melbourne, London and Sydney.

After four novels had been written and rejected The Fat Man in History — a short story collection — was published in 1974. This slim book made him an overnight success.

From 1976 Carey worked one week a month for Grey Advertising, then, in 1981 he established a small business where his generous partner required him to work only two afternoons a week. Thus between 1976 and 1990, he was able to pursue literature obsessively. It was during this period that he wrote War Crimes, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda. Illywhacker was short listed for the Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda won it. Uncomfortable with this success he began work on The Tax Inspector.

In 1990 he moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector. He taught at NYU one night a week. Later he would have similar jobs at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. During these years he wrote The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, and True History of the Kelly Gang for which he won his second Booker Prize.

He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders.

In 2003 he joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. In the years since he has written My Life as a Fake, Theft, His Illegal Self and Parrot and Oliver in America (shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize).
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“She meant I was hungover. I had been slaughtered, legless, trolleyed, slashed, shredded, plastered, polluted, pissed. I thought, I do love my country's relationship with alcohol. How would I ever exist in the United States? I suppose I would have grief counselling instead. (77)” — 1 person liked it

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