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The Tax Inspector
Granny Catchprice runs her family business (and her family) with senility, cunning, and a handbag full of explosives. Her daughter Cathy would rather be singing Country & Western than selling cars, while Benny Catchprice, sixteen and seriously psychopathic, wants to transform a failing auto franchise into an empire—and himself into an angel. Out of the confrontation between the Catchprices and their unwitting nemesis, a beautiful and very pregnant agent of the Australian Taxation Office, Peter Carey, author of Oscar and Lucinda , creates an endlessly surprising and fearfully convincing novel.
305 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Peter Carey
104 books1,056 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Not all books on this profile are by the same author. 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).
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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
April 13, 2026
To summarize the novel's characters or its twisted plot is to risk making the book sound cartoonish, quirky, and grotesque, one given to smirky, easy jokes at its characters' expense. (It's easier to describe the plot without wrecking its many surprises.) But there's something extremely likable about all this. And especially about how Mr Carey gives the combative Catchprices great complexity and depth so that getting to know them is like eating an artichoke in reverse - with every layer added on, we're that much closer to the heart.
Ultimately, I found The Tax Inspector to be a fascinating book because of its links to a genre and a setting I'm partial to. But, unfortunately, that could have distracted me from its charms because I found it unsatisfying as a novel in its own right. There are certainly more influential books I could recommend, but more is needed, and this one is only worth a little.
Ultimately, I found The Tax Inspector to be a fascinating book because of its links to a genre and a setting I'm partial to. But, unfortunately, that could have distracted me from its charms because I found it unsatisfying as a novel in its own right. There are certainly more influential books I could recommend, but more is needed, and this one is only worth a little.
May 25, 2019
In the shadowy and un fathomable aftermath of incest resides a twisted rogue’s gallery of characters. A boisterous dark comic tale focused on the bizarre and often hilarious behavior of the Catchprice tribe. This is an anatomy of a truly dysfunctional family. Along comes the pregnant, soon to deliver, tax inspector, who also happens to want to cut loose from her past. She just doesn’t realize the extent until she joins up with this lunatic fringe. Granny leads the pack with her determination to seek revenge. She serves as a role model for her family as one after another recognize it’s time to move on. Each of them flies off into the realms of all kinds of possibilities. Each family member has their own journey be they in search of love, a music career, becoming an angel, or maybe a Hare Krishna devotee. They all want a way to escape or destroy life in the present for a fresh start. They argue, disarm, threaten and dare one another to take that first giant step into change. Each in their own way would rather risk danger or uncertainty than stagnate in the decaying car garage. Endlessly humorous Carey affords each character a voice to share what they see as a whole new perspective just around that next bend. A free flying story built around some of the most unstable characters imaginable. They fear nothing but being stuck. The story starts slowly only to gain a fast paced momentum with a genius ending.
February 10, 2021
I can only imagine what it must have been like to read this in 1993. It must have melted people's faces off.
The cliché for these kinds of characters and this kind of story is Larger Than Life.
Carey's prose is crisp and measured which balances out the absolutely batshit crazy characters he writes. In the hands of a lesser author this book would be several hundred pages longer and we'd have to explore the depths of each characters misery and read pages of description about the beautiful Sydney scenery. Carey's ability to omit the guff is actually his greatest talent.
In 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account he mentions his architect friend was pissed off with him because Carey had used one of his homes in his book. This is the book. Jack Catchprice's house is the Richard Le Plastrier Palm Garden house. Amazing how he absolutely nails the description.
This book is more quintessentially Australian than his more famous work True History of the Kelly Gang, which is really just an Irish story set in Australia.
If you're not chuckling through this then you're not doing it right.
Onto the next one.
The cliché for these kinds of characters and this kind of story is Larger Than Life.
Carey's prose is crisp and measured which balances out the absolutely batshit crazy characters he writes. In the hands of a lesser author this book would be several hundred pages longer and we'd have to explore the depths of each characters misery and read pages of description about the beautiful Sydney scenery. Carey's ability to omit the guff is actually his greatest talent.
In 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account he mentions his architect friend was pissed off with him because Carey had used one of his homes in his book. This is the book. Jack Catchprice's house is the Richard Le Plastrier Palm Garden house. Amazing how he absolutely nails the description.
This book is more quintessentially Australian than his more famous work True History of the Kelly Gang, which is really just an Irish story set in Australia.
If you're not chuckling through this then you're not doing it right.
Onto the next one.
April 25, 2012
Readers talk about Peter Carey's Hits and Misses. For me, his 'historical' novels, like Jack Maggs and The True History of the Kelly Gang are the home runs. The more contemporary he gets, in characters and themes, the less jaw-dropping he becomes. That was true, certainly, with the forgettable His Illegal Self and it's true here with The Tax Inspector, an earlier work. When one of the main characters is Johnny-turned-Vish, a Hare Krishna, the reader can be certain he is treading into the caricature form.
Still, it's Carey, so the book is undeniably readable, plot-driven. And when you see a few pages of solid dialogue coming up, you can be sure to be in for a treat. As when one self-deprecating character admits, "I ain't no oil painting."
You could do worse.
Still, it's Carey, so the book is undeniably readable, plot-driven. And when you see a few pages of solid dialogue coming up, you can be sure to be in for a treat. As when one self-deprecating character admits, "I ain't no oil painting."
You could do worse.
January 26, 2024
This is a well written book, and Carey is truly a talented writer. But for some reason, the story just did not engage me, and my 3 stars reflect the level of pleasure I got from reading the book. It is quite a dark story, populated by some fairly unpleasant characters, centred on the very pleasant, heavily pregnant (that's an important feature of the story) worldly wise tax inspector. It's an odd story.
Normally, I like stories that are at the odd end of the spectrum, and I am not usually bothered by unpleasant people in fiction. Yet, for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on, this did not quite hang together. The characters and storyline all felt a bit random, and one or two characters appeared, then disappeared without having their story line finished which I found unsatisfactory. It may be that my 6 week hiatus between starting the book and finishing it - I went abroad and forgot it, influenced this view. But the fact that I wasn't at all bothered by forgetting the book, an act that would normally irritate me and make me pine for the book, tells me something.
Still Carey's writing is confident and flowing, and at times engaging. Perhaps one of those that just wasn't for me but will suit others much more.
Normally, I like stories that are at the odd end of the spectrum, and I am not usually bothered by unpleasant people in fiction. Yet, for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on, this did not quite hang together. The characters and storyline all felt a bit random, and one or two characters appeared, then disappeared without having their story line finished which I found unsatisfactory. It may be that my 6 week hiatus between starting the book and finishing it - I went abroad and forgot it, influenced this view. But the fact that I wasn't at all bothered by forgetting the book, an act that would normally irritate me and make me pine for the book, tells me something.
Still Carey's writing is confident and flowing, and at times engaging. Perhaps one of those that just wasn't for me but will suit others much more.
February 15, 2020
I found this hard work. There wasn't, for me, anyone to care about or any reason to be particularly interested in what happened next. It felt like this could easily have been a short story, I'm not sure why it ended up as a novel. The writing was not bad, in any way, but almost completely uninteresting
June 25, 2009
This story, published in 1993, has many of the features that seem to be characteristic of Carey's novels:
* gothic family drama played out by eccentric, larger-than-life (yet oddly appealing) characters
* dark simmering family secrets ( nearly everyone is haunted by ghosts from the past)
* sporadic alcohol or rage-fueled acts of extreme violence
* at least one character (generally male) who is completely batshit crazy
* a wildly original plot, whose plausibility doesn't hold up under careful scrutiny, but which is made palatable by
* the author's natural gift for storytelling (excellent pacing and tight construction) and
* writing that is polished and highly readable
There are worse formulas, and so far I've not read anything by Carey that's been a complete dud. "The Tax Inspector" falls in the middle of the pack - an enjoyable read, but not his best, in my opinion. Aspects that I thought didn't work all that well included:
MINOR SPOILER ALERT (though if you haven't figured out by page 20 that this story is going to end with a bang, you're not paying attention)
# Things were just a little too gothic - the rampant dysfunction within the Catchprice family, ranging from the gelignite-toting grandma to the psychopathic 16-year old, Benny, (whose initial meltdown precipitates the havoc that unfolds as the story progresses), is just a little too over the top to carry much of an emotional charge
# Why does the deep dark family secret always have to be incest propagated across the generations?
# Practically the first thing we're told about Granny Catchprice is that she carries a stick of gelignite in her handbag at all times. Which means, by a simple application of Chekhov's law of the loaded gun, that we know how things will turn out. So where was the suspense?
# The whole Sarkis story arc seemed entirely tangential and added little to the overall development
# For that matter, the tax inspector character was dull, and the integration of her story (such as it was) with that of the crazy Catchprice clan was kind of clumsy
These criticisms are actually pretty minor. Because, as in his other books, Carey's gift for telling a good yarn, his ability to pull the reader into the eccentric milieu of his characters and make us care about those characters (even the weird ones) more than compensate for minor structural weaknesses. So that this was a very enjoyable read. While I don't think it qualifies for a fourth star, it does make me want to keep reading his stuff.
Have I mentioned that Peter Carey has a wicked sense of humor?
* gothic family drama played out by eccentric, larger-than-life (yet oddly appealing) characters
* dark simmering family secrets ( nearly everyone is haunted by ghosts from the past)
* sporadic alcohol or rage-fueled acts of extreme violence
* at least one character (generally male) who is completely batshit crazy
* a wildly original plot, whose plausibility doesn't hold up under careful scrutiny, but which is made palatable by
* the author's natural gift for storytelling (excellent pacing and tight construction) and
* writing that is polished and highly readable
There are worse formulas, and so far I've not read anything by Carey that's been a complete dud. "The Tax Inspector" falls in the middle of the pack - an enjoyable read, but not his best, in my opinion. Aspects that I thought didn't work all that well included:
MINOR SPOILER ALERT (though if you haven't figured out by page 20 that this story is going to end with a bang, you're not paying attention)
# Things were just a little too gothic - the rampant dysfunction within the Catchprice family, ranging from the gelignite-toting grandma to the psychopathic 16-year old, Benny, (whose initial meltdown precipitates the havoc that unfolds as the story progresses), is just a little too over the top to carry much of an emotional charge
# Why does the deep dark family secret always have to be incest propagated across the generations?
# Practically the first thing we're told about Granny Catchprice is that she carries a stick of gelignite in her handbag at all times. Which means, by a simple application of Chekhov's law of the loaded gun, that we know how things will turn out. So where was the suspense?
# The whole Sarkis story arc seemed entirely tangential and added little to the overall development
# For that matter, the tax inspector character was dull, and the integration of her story (such as it was) with that of the crazy Catchprice clan was kind of clumsy
These criticisms are actually pretty minor. Because, as in his other books, Carey's gift for telling a good yarn, his ability to pull the reader into the eccentric milieu of his characters and make us care about those characters (even the weird ones) more than compensate for minor structural weaknesses. So that this was a very enjoyable read. While I don't think it qualifies for a fourth star, it does make me want to keep reading his stuff.
Have I mentioned that Peter Carey has a wicked sense of humor?
March 17, 2026
The Australian writer Peter Carey is one of the best storytellers around. He's outrageously good at it.
The Tax Inspector is a case in point. It features a grotesque collection of memorable characters, a twisted plot featuring tax fraud, child abuse and the most dysfunctional family in literature. Carey's genius is how he somehow melds horror and comedy. A startlingly good book. If you haven't read it, do.
The Tax Inspector is a case in point. It features a grotesque collection of memorable characters, a twisted plot featuring tax fraud, child abuse and the most dysfunctional family in literature. Carey's genius is how he somehow melds horror and comedy. A startlingly good book. If you haven't read it, do.
January 21, 2009
This book was a totally pleasant surprise. I was in Panama, on a way out in the middle of nowhere island, and this book had been left behind by someone. I'd never before read anything by Peter Carey, so decided to try it. I had just finished rereading Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, and didn't think anything so soon after would satisfy me. But this book had some of the same characteristics and qualities of the Morrison novel, in that it was the story of a family scarred by history and past generations, although the Carey book takes place on an auto dealership in a town in Australia. I found it to be nearly great---it goes a little over the top at the end, almost descending into horror film territory. Still, there is a lot of greatness in it, and made me feel Peter Carey should be ranked way up there among contemporary writers
May 21, 2019
Carey’s plotting is absolutely wonderful and his portrayal of characters is done with a triumphant mix of humour, insight and sensitivity. He is also a master of giving feeling and shape to the places he describes, so that you are right there in the suburbs of early 90s Sydney on every page.
This is a violent, shocking and heart breaking book but it’s also an hilarious, clever and surreal adventure that shows why Carey is a much lauded author and not only one of the best in Australia, but one of the finest currently writing literary fiction in the world today.
November 7, 2007
The first Peter Carey novel i have read and i really enjoyed it. He creates memorable, believable almost unforgettable characters with immense skill an so you end up forgiving him the over the top aspects as it all seems so believable. But at the end i did think, so what was the point in that and wasnt it a bit desperate in the use of sexual trauma for drama but he seemed to have a lot of fun writing it and i had a lot of fun reading it.
January 4, 2021
This book was a two edged sword for me. I am a Peter Carey fan for all the usual reasons - amazing storytelling and the ability to describe people and events so completely that you feel you are there experiencing it all right with the characters. The problem here was that I was landed in a world that I didn't like, with people that scared me a little, and disturbed me a lot. I'll need some time to decompress from it all.
May 14, 2018
Dysfunctional cannot begin to describe the family in this book. The most, no the only, sympathetic character is a tax auditor. The characters are bound to each other and somewhere in there is a plot. As they struggle against each other the book sinks until it is ultimately drowned in it's characters' sea of unlikable traits. There is some good writing here, but I could not like this book.
July 10, 2011
I got caught up in this book for most of the way, but didn't expect the runaway train anarchic ending. I have the feeling that Carey didn't know how to end the book and took the easy way out.
June 11, 2026
A quirky, unreal multiple-panel comic strip sequence of a story-board, woven together around Catchprice Motors and the tax inspector, Maria Takis. The narrative grips the reader bringing them into the corruption and trauma, hoping for a way out for everyone.
The Catchprice family characters represent the good, the bad, and the distasteful of the human condition.
Full colour fluorescent broadsides of a tale. A current-day fable of an exceptionally broken week in their life.
Occasionally, smiles will appear on your face as you read this book and then you’ll quickly look around and hope no one noticed.
And the glory of this fabled suburbia stares back at the reader like a meat pie splattered on the floor. Glorious in its vainglory.
(Be aware, vulgar language and explicit scenes appear here and there, albeit in context, which may distress some readers.)
The Catchprice family characters represent the good, the bad, and the distasteful of the human condition.
Full colour fluorescent broadsides of a tale. A current-day fable of an exceptionally broken week in their life.
Occasionally, smiles will appear on your face as you read this book and then you’ll quickly look around and hope no one noticed.
And the glory of this fabled suburbia stares back at the reader like a meat pie splattered on the floor. Glorious in its vainglory.
(Be aware, vulgar language and explicit scenes appear here and there, albeit in context, which may distress some readers.)
June 19, 2021
I read this book very quickly, hoping that at some point it would gain some clarity. Was it a black comedy? A family tragedy? A tale of horror? Probably all of those things but it was never satisfying. Each generation of an alarmingly dysfunctional family spreads psychic venom to its progeny like a widening poisonous ripple. Only a tax inspector, searching their failing business for malfeasance, shows any semblance of rationality. What was the author trying to say? It's a mystery to me.
April 6, 2022
He's my favourite author but, you know, sometimes he just needs to pull back. I didn't need the description of the father sexually molesting his three year old son, or the explicit sexual interactions between that son and his father once he's an adult. These scenes aren't even used in a serious context. They are in a story that is written in Carey's usual jolly, upbeat, sometimes almost slapstick, style. I stopped reading with just under a third to go.
April 14, 2026
Beautifully disturbing. Revels in humour and sadness. There's no highs without lows. Masterfully written. Few loaded guns that didn't go off, and the pacing is a bit off.
February 3, 2022
An excellent, dark, captivating story about a pregnant tax officer trying very hard to disentangle herself from a fucked up family of car dealers. The characters were all very well-written and complicated and it was just a hell of a story. I haven't been very interested in Peter Carey's writing before now and this book has definitely made me reconsider.
April 15, 2019
The Tax Collector by Peter Carey tells the story of a young heavily pregnant Tax Inspector called Maria Takis tasked with conducting an audit of Catchprice Motors in the small backwater of Franklin on the outskirts of Sydney in the State of New South Wales, Australia. That may sound boring, but it’s the Catchprice family that are the real stars in this ever so slightly bizarre novel. Granny Catchprice, who believes she still runs the company, is wonderfully realised as a character, and the flashbacks to her childhood and early adulthood and the original dream she had for the business are worthy of a novel in their own right. Her son, Mort, who manages the repair end of things, is one of the most repellent characters I’ve come across in a long while and yet Carey doesn’t resort to any of the obvious clichés in letting us know what he is really like. Her daughter, Cathy, does run the family business, along with her husband, but dreams of extracting herself to pursue her career as a Country and Western singer. Granny Catchprice’s grandson, Benny, who is continually passed over for promotion and actually fired by Cathy at the beginning of the book, simply won’t stay fired and secretly wants to become an angel.
Benny becomes obsessed with Maria despite a big age difference, and Maria is drawn to Mort’s charismatic brother, Jack, who has pursued a career as a property developer and returns to Catchprice Motors to stave off the imminent disaster of her discovery of long standing tax evasion. As several of the characters become increasingly unstable and things spiral out of control, the story becomes one of lost dreams and the awfulness of being trapped in the stifling confines of other people’s failed dreams. I read recently that Carey’s family ran a car dealership when he was a child and I wonder how much of this novel is based on actual experience. I hope it’s very little; the Catchprice family is one of the strangest dysfunctional groups of people you’re likely to encounter in literature.
Benny becomes obsessed with Maria despite a big age difference, and Maria is drawn to Mort’s charismatic brother, Jack, who has pursued a career as a property developer and returns to Catchprice Motors to stave off the imminent disaster of her discovery of long standing tax evasion. As several of the characters become increasingly unstable and things spiral out of control, the story becomes one of lost dreams and the awfulness of being trapped in the stifling confines of other people’s failed dreams. I read recently that Carey’s family ran a car dealership when he was a child and I wonder how much of this novel is based on actual experience. I hope it’s very little; the Catchprice family is one of the strangest dysfunctional groups of people you’re likely to encounter in literature.
January 17, 2011
I'm not sure how Carey does it but he manages to tie in a flailing, failing car dealership, ne'er do well aspiring country western musicans getting their final break, the eldery matriach losing her mind and control over her children and their brood resorting to explosives to regain her power, a Hare Krishna grandson who keeps on becoming re-attached to his "attachments", a 8 month pregnant tax inspector conducting an audit on this outrageous family and the youngest of the Catchprice brood who is successfully losing his mind and becoming an angel of lust instead.
I think it is the strangest Peter Carey novel I've read yet. I expected so little of what happened. It's like a cult film I'll never get out of my head.
I think it is the strangest Peter Carey novel I've read yet. I expected so little of what happened. It's like a cult film I'll never get out of my head.
May 22, 2013
Still not really sure what this book was about. The characters are interesting enough, but they move in strange and mysterious ways and it's unclear why anything is happening. The ending is a little ridiculous.
July 22, 2015
A horror story.
July 24, 2012
so far so good
October 4, 2017
A recurring trope in writing Australian suburbia is escape and transcendence of suburbia or outer suburban Franklin in Peter Carey’s novel The Tax Inspector from and of suburbia as the site of physical and psychological abjection. Robert Dixon feels that Carey’s outer suburban allegory misses the mark in its conflation of systemic corruption with private transgressions (45). Maria’s the Tax Inspector’s investigation of Catchprice Motors reveals more private transgressions than those to do with tax evasion when she becomes embroiled in the sordid Catchprice family legacy of sexual violence. Dixon’s criticism of Carey’s novel as an effective outer suburban allegory rests upon his assessment of the novel as flawed in its employment of sexual transgressions as a mode of representation of broader issues of social decline.
Certain forms of sexual abuse, such as incest are often conceptualized as a pathology and as such, Carey’s project pathologizes outer suburbia. In two almost identically worded moments in the novel, Granny Catchprice rehearses a narrative about her daughter, Cathy Catchprice’s early childhood musical affinities. The first of these moments occurs almost directly after the disturbing seduction scene between Benny and his father, who started molesting Benny when he was a toddler with the result that as a sixteen-year-old, Benny comes to symbolise the corruption of outer suburbia, a product of an ill-defined social decline. Almost seventy pages later, the passage is repeated with minor variations, following Granny Catchprice’s reflection that:
[She] had made her life, invented it. When it was not what she wanted, she changed it. In Dorrigo, she called them maggots and walked away. She had gelignite in her handbag and Cacka was nervous, stumbling, too shy to even touch her breasts with his chest (228).
Then comes the revelation that precipitates Granny Catchprice’s decision to finally put her hoard of gelignite to use; not only did her husband molest Benny but also Cathy, who implicates her in this transgression as having sat by knitting. The repetition of these two passages perhaps indicates them as a narrative Granny Catchprice rehearses as a form of selective amnesia of trauma. Indeed, if outer suburbia is represented as a pathological physical and psychological landscape in the Carey’s novel, then Granny Catchprice’s excision and elimination of Catchprice Motors at the conclusion of the novel fit the framework of this metaphor. While Dixon’s specific criticism of the novel is that it fails to diagnose the structural corruption that the private narrative of sexual transgressions the Catchprice family represents, there is perhaps an answer for this in the final lines of the second repeated passage, after Cathy confronts her mother about her childhood sexual abuse at the hands of their father:
She had the gelignite in her handbag when she met him. She had it in the butcher’s. The detonators clinking around her neck. She had it there from the beginning (233).
These lines and Granny Catchprice’s ultimate facial maiming after she sets off the gelignite to destroy Catchprice Motors imply perhaps that the root of the diseased landscape that is outer Australian suburbia lies within the older post-war generation and their values and ideals. The final solution according to Granny Catchprice is excision and removal, a clearin of the landscape just as she blasted tree stumps from earth decades earlier to establish a clean slate of land for her flower farm.
Certain forms of sexual abuse, such as incest are often conceptualized as a pathology and as such, Carey’s project pathologizes outer suburbia. In two almost identically worded moments in the novel, Granny Catchprice rehearses a narrative about her daughter, Cathy Catchprice’s early childhood musical affinities. The first of these moments occurs almost directly after the disturbing seduction scene between Benny and his father, who started molesting Benny when he was a toddler with the result that as a sixteen-year-old, Benny comes to symbolise the corruption of outer suburbia, a product of an ill-defined social decline. Almost seventy pages later, the passage is repeated with minor variations, following Granny Catchprice’s reflection that:
[She] had made her life, invented it. When it was not what she wanted, she changed it. In Dorrigo, she called them maggots and walked away. She had gelignite in her handbag and Cacka was nervous, stumbling, too shy to even touch her breasts with his chest (228).
Then comes the revelation that precipitates Granny Catchprice’s decision to finally put her hoard of gelignite to use; not only did her husband molest Benny but also Cathy, who implicates her in this transgression as having sat by knitting. The repetition of these two passages perhaps indicates them as a narrative Granny Catchprice rehearses as a form of selective amnesia of trauma. Indeed, if outer suburbia is represented as a pathological physical and psychological landscape in the Carey’s novel, then Granny Catchprice’s excision and elimination of Catchprice Motors at the conclusion of the novel fit the framework of this metaphor. While Dixon’s specific criticism of the novel is that it fails to diagnose the structural corruption that the private narrative of sexual transgressions the Catchprice family represents, there is perhaps an answer for this in the final lines of the second repeated passage, after Cathy confronts her mother about her childhood sexual abuse at the hands of their father:
She had the gelignite in her handbag when she met him. She had it in the butcher’s. The detonators clinking around her neck. She had it there from the beginning (233).
These lines and Granny Catchprice’s ultimate facial maiming after she sets off the gelignite to destroy Catchprice Motors imply perhaps that the root of the diseased landscape that is outer Australian suburbia lies within the older post-war generation and their values and ideals. The final solution according to Granny Catchprice is excision and removal, a clearin of the landscape just as she blasted tree stumps from earth decades earlier to establish a clean slate of land for her flower farm.
April 6, 2020
By the author of the true history of the Kelly gang, this is one of his earlier award-winning novels.
Deals with a period of three days in the life of a family who own a car dealership outside of Sydney. The tax inspector is a young woman sent to investiagte the company, who subsequently becomes a love interest for two of the sons, one estranged from the rest of the family but successful, the other, a psychotic individual who ends up kidnapping the inspector leading to the novels denouement.
Rather unsatisfying from my perspective due to the lack of a conclusion to the whole thing. A lot of characters are introduced but then fail to re-appear and the conclusion of the book does nothing to tie things together. Read this shortly after trying to read ‘my life as a fake’, another Carey novel and after these two unsatisfying experiences may be reluctant to try another by the same author.
Deals with a period of three days in the life of a family who own a car dealership outside of Sydney. The tax inspector is a young woman sent to investiagte the company, who subsequently becomes a love interest for two of the sons, one estranged from the rest of the family but successful, the other, a psychotic individual who ends up kidnapping the inspector leading to the novels denouement.
Rather unsatisfying from my perspective due to the lack of a conclusion to the whole thing. A lot of characters are introduced but then fail to re-appear and the conclusion of the book does nothing to tie things together. Read this shortly after trying to read ‘my life as a fake’, another Carey novel and after these two unsatisfying experiences may be reluctant to try another by the same author.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 1, 2026
Sort of like Arrested Development, but darker.
Three generations of the Catchprice family live together on the property of their auto dealership and repair shop. To say that they are co-dependent is a huge understatement. Even those who appear to have gotten away, one to a life of privilege and one to a Hare Krishna ashram, are drawn back when the beautiful and enormously pregnant tax inspector comes to check the books of the family business.
This is not a pretty family. Fathers preying on children is a cycle they can't stop repeating.
This book was written in 1991 and set in the then present time. I had forgotten that in the 1990s, every book set in that period had to mention AIDS, like every book published from 2002-2010 and set in the present day had to mention 9/11, and every book written now and set in modern time has to mention the pandemic. Huh. This too will pass?
Three generations of the Catchprice family live together on the property of their auto dealership and repair shop. To say that they are co-dependent is a huge understatement. Even those who appear to have gotten away, one to a life of privilege and one to a Hare Krishna ashram, are drawn back when the beautiful and enormously pregnant tax inspector comes to check the books of the family business.
This is not a pretty family. Fathers preying on children is a cycle they can't stop repeating.
This book was written in 1991 and set in the then present time. I had forgotten that in the 1990s, every book set in that period had to mention AIDS, like every book published from 2002-2010 and set in the present day had to mention 9/11, and every book written now and set in modern time has to mention the pandemic. Huh. This too will pass?
September 5, 2018
1990s Sidney. A family of broken people: Freida Catchprice, her son Mort and daughter Cathy own a car dealership that is almost bankrupt and about to be investigated for tax fraud. Two grandsons: John (Vishna, as he is now a Hare Krishna) and Lee who has decided to become a better angel. All struggle to realize their dreams. The spanner in the works is Maria Tarkis, an 8-month pregnant by her boss, tax inspector who sees a small amount of redemption in the family. Yet she is morally required to investigate the business. At times, dreamlike in re-telling of Freida’s childhood, and sinister in the abuse that the boys in the family endure, the story comes to an explosive conclusion. Dark and disturbing.
Highly recommend
Highly recommend
January 22, 2024
I have to paraphrase a years-ago review of The Tax Inspector, probably close to the year it was published: "Why is it that every time I read modern literature anymore, I wind up in a basement with a psychopath?" Yes, Peter Carey does write beautiful sentences, creates incredible characters, and there is a surfeit of black comedy that many others have noted and critiqued. The first two-thirds of the book built slowly, and the last third was nuts, so disturbing that I didn't want to read it alone at home. Right now, I am not sure how many of the main characters survived the ending. Thomas Pynchon would create marvelous characters only to discard them willy-nilly. Carey does the same. A hanging question: What happened to Sarkis???
May 27, 2018
3.5 - From a slow start to being real page-turner, this is one of the most original stories I've read. The author takes us to unexpected places in the blink of an eye and does so very smoothly. Just the cast of caracters makes this book worth readying. A 3.5 rating as I thought a couple of loose ends could have been expanded or tied up better, but overall a really enjoyable read.
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