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    My Life as a Fake
    My Life as a Fake
    My Life as a Fake
    Audiobook9 hours

    My Life as a Fake

    Written by Peter Carey

    Narrated by Susan Lyons

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Fiendishly devious and addictively readable, Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake is a moral labyrinth constructed around the uneasy relationship between literature and lying. In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a London poetry journal, meets a mysterious Australian named Christopher Chubb. Chubb is a despised literary hoaxer, carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. But in this dubious manuscript Sarah recognizes a work of real genius. But whose genius? As Sarah tries to secure the manuscript, Chubb draws her into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile-a story that couldn't be true unless its teller were mad. My Life as a Fake is Carey at his most audacious and entertaining.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 10, 2008
    ISBN9781449801601
    My Life as a Fake

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    Reviews for My Life as a Fake

    3.5/5

    317 ratings22 reviews

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    • 4/5
      An intriguing, twisted take on a real author's hoax in the 1940s. Carey creates interesting characters and paints the scene so you feel like you are actually there. While all of the little subplots make the book a bit confusing as it wears on (it somewhat reminded me of the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 screenplay), it was still an enjoyable book. I liked that it made me think, but not so much that the emotions really carried over from reading to my day-to-day life backpacking (as some of the more depressing tomes I picked up along the way did!).
    • 4/5
      A lesson in storytelling. There is a good story here, and some things to think about, especially about poetry, but what really stood out for me was how dynamic the storytelling was. It was fun to read from the very first page.The inspiration of the story is a real hoax in poetry world of Australia during WWII, where an editor became enraptured with what turned out to be the fictional poet Ern Malley and his fictional life story. Carey's story calls into question the true value of poetry, and looks at the obsession to find a sort of pure poet, an outsider free of the modern prevailing poetry culture, but still a master.What I admire here is that we aren't told what to think. The story on the pages stays light. It's serves more like a jumping off point for pondering the nature of modern poetry and of humanity (and of truth vs. fiction). The implied questions are, perhaps, much deeper.I should also mention this includes an interesting look at Malaysia during and after WWII.
    • 2/5
      Good premise but didn't develop or resolve well.
    • 2/5
      Good premise but didn't develop or resolve well.
    • 3/5
      A book about literary hoaxes which manages to be pretty gosh-darned boring. I expected more and was disappointed.
    • 4/5
      London literary magazine editor Sarah agrees to accompany an old family friend, author John Slater, on a trip to Malaysia, where she quite accidentally meets Christopher Chubb - an Australian poet living in shamed exile after a scandal in which he created a hoax poet whose works were published in a high-profile publication. While the trick doesn't seem like that much of an issue in and of itself, the poems were later the subject of court case in which the editor was tried for obscenity and ultimately died in questionable circumstances. But stranger yet is the arrival on the trial scene of a man who claims to be the hoax poet - fitting every description of the imaginary personage. Chubb insists that Sarah must hear the full story and so unfolds a tale that spans years and countries, involving all kinds of turmoil, including kidnappings and murder.This book was inspired in part by the real-life story of Ern Malley, a literary hoax whose creation resulted in a court case. But Carey then diverges from the story by introducing elements of magical realism, most notably the character of Bob McCorkle, the apparently turned-to-real-life fruition of Chubb's creative joke. The storytelling is deceptively simple, appearing to be simply the earnest narration of Sarah but then turning into stories within stories as she hears from Chubb and then learns alternate perspectives from Slater, Chubb's daughter Tina, and Tina's caregiver Mrs. Linn, with the plot unfolding layer after layer. In this way, Carey plays not only with literary conventions but also with themes related to the nature of reality, the reliability of memory, and the elements that go into perception. Some things are deliberately (and I think well so) left vague, so that the reader must decide for him or herself exactly what has transpired and which story to believe - or which parts from each story are to be believed.The version I had was an audiobook narrated by Susan Lyons, who did an excellent job of conveying a number of emotions and stories passionately while also doing a fantastic job of speaking with the many accents required by the cast of characters presented. I highly recommend this book for a relatively short read that will leave you with plenty of food for thought on a variety of topics.
    • 5/5
      An exceptional novel from Peter Carey. It's even better than the amazing True History of the Kelly Gang. I can not recommend it too highly. A dazzler.
    • 4/5
      The story is loosely based on a hoax perpetrated by two young Australian writers in the early 1940s. These two writers, James McCauley and Harold Stewart did not agree with the tenets of modern poetry. They not only disliked the lack of craftmanship in modern poetry, such as that of T.S. Eliot, but also were jealous of the success of Max Harris, another young poet who was successfully publishing a poetry journal called "Angry Penguins."One day they decide to teach Harris a lesson. They made up 17 'modern' poems using random words and phrases from the Oxford English Dictionary and other books. They send them to Harris with a letter from a woman claiming to be the sister of the author of the poems who found them going through her husband's things after his death. When Harris received the poems, he declares he's discovered a new great poet. He immediately releases a special issue of "Angry Penguins;" he even commissions a special cover from a famous Australian painter.The novel has a story line much more convoluted, complex and sometimes confusing. Sarah Wode-Douglass is the editor of a poetry journal in the U.K. She meets at one party John Slater, the best known British poet of the day, who she's known since she was a child- he is 20 years her senior and she think he had an affair with her mother that led to her suicide. Somehow he convinces her to travel with him to Kuala Lumpur where she meets Christopher Chubb, who fixes bicycles, lives in poverty with a Chinese woman and a younger girl. Chubb claims he has the writings of Robert McCorkle, the 'fake' poet. We see Sarah chasing and looking for Chubb trying to figure out what he really has. We are not sure if McCorkle is real or fake- Chubb makes him sound as real. Sarah is trying to find Chubb while Chubb is trying to find McCorkle. In the end, both of Chubb's women kill him. While Sarah, and the reader, isn't sure if McCorkle killed him- but is McCorkle a real person? The book purportedly written by McCorkle remains in their hands. Sarah goes back to England and remains unsure of McCorkle's existence.
    • 3/5
      I thought this would be more fun than it was.
    • 3/5
      I think I would have rated this book higher except for the fact that the ending left me feeling a bit empty. Is this a reworking of Frankenstein. I hadn't thought about it until I read the Shelley quote at the start of the book. A nice idea and quite often people do get consumed with a monster of their own creation and gradually grow to resent it. The character of the editor presumable was supposed to be the main character however we don't really find out much about her. As you can tell I am in a few minds about this book which kind of reflects the feeling of the book itself. Yes the plot is intriguing and it will keep you glued and there are some lovely side stories and details typical of Carey. Some of the characters feel like they are not fully realised. Compare it to say Parrot and Olivier or Jack Maggs and the story is not as fully realised in my opinion. A very humble opinion in face of such a great author that is!
    • 5/5
      While other reviewers consider this book confusing, I disagree and find it masterful. There are some shifting dialogues, but with one of the character's speech always typically (linguistically) marked, the careful reader should not lose track. An absolutely great read, with a great deal of humour and quite a pinch of horror.The story is framed by the hunt and wish of a young female editor, Sarah, to discover a great, unknown poet and make a scoop. She stumbles upon Chubb who leads the miserable life of an absolute loser in Kuala Lumpur. Despite her travel companion's attempts to save her from herself and Chubb, whom he seems to know all about, Sarah is sure she's onto her great discovery. Chubb carefully entices her to listen to his life story, holding the supposedly great works out as bait.Chubb is an outcast. In his youth he wrote a pastiche of some poetry of a friend, attributing / publishing those poems under the pseudonym Bob McCorkle. This McCorkle, shows up in flesh and blood, claiming to be the author and starts haunting and causing havoc in Chubb's life. McCorkle kidnaps Chubb's daughter and disappears to southeast Asia, where Chubb eventually tracks him down, and manages to liberate his child, who is completely estranged from him. When Sarah meets Chubb, many years later, Chubb is revered by his wife and daughter, who guard his works like guardian angels.The novel has stark overtones, reminding us of Conrad's Asian and African novels and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. McCorkle is like an evil genii, called up or into existence by Chubb. Originally, Chubb created McCorkle, or so he thought, and tracking down his malicious creation reverberates the hunt for the monster of Frankenstein.There are several other, remaining strands. The role of Sarah's travel companion is not very clear. He draws her attention to Chubb, apparently casually, but fully and knowingly of who Chubb is. He acts a bit like Sarah's mentor. The novel extensively explores issues of authorship and copyrights, and the moral rights attached to that.Throughout the book, Chubb is put forward as an utterly repulsive figure. Repeatedly, we are confronted with his legs, covered with pustules and boils, his miserable life style, his run-down clothes and even his deteriorated English. Nobody wants to have anything to do with him, except for the deluded, misguided, his wife (apparently), his daughter (supposedly) and desperate Sarah.
    • 2/5
      Not really sure how I feel about this book. I read it quickly. Over about 2 days. Not quite sure about the ending. I guess I was expecting something that could possibly explain the mystery of McCorkle's life. I wasn't expecting such a clear indication that McCorkle and Chubb were separate.Was there a moral to the book? What comes of lies? How you can be consumed by the tale? Perhaps? It was nonetheless a good yarn, and I enjoyed it. I can't help but feel I'm missing something though.
    • 4/5
      After a couple of weeks of just reading classical fiction, Carey's novel was a breath of fresh air. The story is a bizarre and relentless one, of a poet who creates a hoax to humiliate a former friend, only to find that his creation has become a reality. The publisher of a literary magazine in the UK sets out to find the truth, and to gain for herself the poems of the genius-hoax; and she too has her own history to deal with.If I had any complaints with Carey's work here, it is that there is simply too much going on. It's like a season of 24, with betrayals, glimpses of the truth, action sequences; and all of this skips about merrily and dramatically, until by the end of the book I can hardly remember how it all began.
    • 4/5
      From the first page Peter Carey captures the reader’s attention and entertains with great writing as he tells the story of hoaxes, madmen, rejections, unfulfilled expectations, fakes and lies. Carey maintains a good pace throughout the book but the story fizzles at the end and left me a little dissatisfied. Nevertheless this is a book worth reading. The story begins in London where Sarah, the youngest editor of a literary magazine, is somewhat depressed for not having introduced a major work to the world in her 12 years in the job. She is enticed by an old family friend – John Slater, a mediocre poet turned critic still living off the reputation of his first work – to Malaysia. There, while strolling through a shopping alley Sarah spies a western man working in a bike repair shop reading Rilke. Anyone reading Rilke would be interested in her magazine she thought, so she returns to the shop and leaves a copy for him. Quickly he gets in touch with her and we meet Christopher Chubb who considers himself a poet - and who once did submit some work to Sarah’s magazine that was rejected. He shows her one page of his work which he believes is “great” and Sarah is immediately interested. But to see the rest of the work Sarah must hear his story.From this point the novel is a monologue as Chubb tells his story and Sarah frantically takes notes while John Slater, who knows of Chubb more intimately than he makes out, tries to wrest her away. We learn of Chubb’s hoax some 30year earlier (based on the infamous 1944 Australian Ern Malley hoax) where he tries to embarrass an old school chum who had rejected his works. The editor falls for the hoax but Carey’s story takes a different turn from the original when Weiss is charged with publishing obscenities. Chubb would like to help the editor get off the charge, but during the trial a strange man appears who vaguely resembles a montage photo of Bob McCorkle, the unrecognized Australian working class poet that Chubb created.The imaginary man becomes real and Chubb is stalked by “McCorkle” who is seeking a full identity from his creator - and eventually a passport. Chubb’s life becomes a nightmare. McCorkle gets his new identity with the help of Chubb’s lover, the woman to whom he may or may not be the father of her newly born daughter, and a friend of hers – who turns out to be John Slater, who had a one-night stand about the time the daughter was conceived. Who is who and who is not start becoming confused. McCorkle gets custody of the daughter as the mother - a libertine and socialite - is more interested in a party life than motherhood. He flees to South-East Asia where he has little difficulty in attracting benefactors. Enraged, Chubb chases him and spends the next couple of decades tracking him down and reclaiming his daughter. This story has a Frankenstein element of the creator being haunted by his creation leading to the creator destroying his creation in this story. But as the story unfolds characters and roles become confused, and the issue of truth, lies and deception takes central stage. Is McCorkle the creation of Chubb or is Chubb appropriating McCorkle’s work? Why does John Slater understate his knowledge of Chubb? Is Sarah deceiving herself in her pursuit of a “major work”? Where do facts end and lies begin becomes harder to tell. Carey has a great way with words and is a good storyteller and these skills compensate for the less than satisfactory ending of this story. Who is the fake? Read and enjoy.
    • 3/5
      Lack of quotation marks made it hard to determine which character was speaking
    • 2/5
      Yes, he is a tremendous storyteller, almost letter-perfect. I was thrown out of the narrative only once in the entire book, on p. 271, line 1, when the narrator tells us "It had taken me years to realize that, for all his faults, John Slater was truly very kind" -- but it seems in context that the narrator had only just thought of that. Carey drives a plot forward more deftly than any contemporary writer, and he reminds me, in a different register, of Maeve Binchy: by which I mean the book has the narrative drive that I would associate with more popular fiction.But that is also the trouble. What was the point of the three years of research he put into this book? Why make it so such in cultural references? Why learn so much about Malaysia? He isn't Naipaul -- he isn't writing to tell us about the Tamils in Malaysia. The book is really about poets, their lives and ambitions, publishing, literary hoaxes, the rarity and nature of genius, and so forth: things that have nothing to do with the profusion of cultural details.Of course it's inevitable that a title like this will make readers think of the author. The book is "fake" in the sense that Carey hides some of his thoughts about genius and its relation to sanity in a zoological garden of ethnographic details. It doesn't make me want to read another of his books.
    • 5/5
      I highly recommend this book. I was already a fan of Peter Carey, but approach his books with trepidation as some of them just don't work. This though is one of his best, and ranks alongside Oscar and Lucinda, Illywhacker, Jack Maggs, True History of Kelly Gang - as a great Carey. The central themes are truth and ambition - and the tensions between the two. The themes are played out convincingly by believable ( although grotesque ) characters.
    • 5/5
      Another fantastic novel
    • 3/5
      Has some really effective scenes - especially during the early sections that take place in Kuala Lumpur. Then the subplots meander every which way so that the story loses its cohesiveness.
    • 5/5
      What do you do when you find your life has been built on misperceptions, misperceptions as grand as the reason and means behind your mother’s death? How do you react when you find out the hoax you’ve been chasing turns out to be a hoax of a hoax? These are just some of the revelations that Sarah Wode-Douglass, one of the main characters of this novel, finds in her search.Once again, Carey gives us a heavily Far Eastern influenced blend of eccentric and complicated characters, reminiscent of Illywacker. While most of the action in My Life as a Fake takes place in Malaysia, the cast of characters is drawn from England, Malaysia, Australia, authors and poets from other lands and the minds of the characters in this book.Carey takes liberties with, according to the Author’s Notes, a real literary hoax from the mid 1940’s. In Carey’s version of the story, the hoax becomes a parable of how we are shaped by how we perceive our own memories. None of the characters we are introduced to are quite what they seem to be and even the patently invented characters take on a life of their own because of the way people believe in them. In the end, you are left questioning what is real and what is not, very similar to the questions left after Martel’s Life of Pi. Just remember, this is a story . . . isn’t it?After reading My Life as a Fake, I can’t help but wonder why Peter Carey is not better known in America. His writing is just plain brilliant. As with Illywacker, Carey writes very graphically. I had no trouble envisioning the people or settings described in the book. The liberal use of Malay dialect in the narrative pulled me even further into the story. The scenes became so vivid, I began to cast people for a movie in my head while reading. One of the few detracting features is Carey did not use quotes to separate dialog from exposition. Then again, the story deals with poetic license and the inability to separate reality from fantasy, so the physical layout of the book mirrors the story as well. Very fitting.If you like the division between fantasy and reality clearly defined, this book may give you trouble. If you like realistic characters with as many levels of interpretation as real people, you will enjoy this work. If nothing else, read this for the exotic locale and quirky people you will meet. While not casual escapism, this novel is certainly a break from reality.
    • 2/5
      A poetry journal editor goes to Kuala Lampur for obscure reasons. There she meets the perpetrator of a literary hoax in Australia many years before. I quit before learning whether (& if so, how) he was misleading her, but I don't really care very much. I don't understand how someone who could write a book as wonderful as Oscar & Lucinda could so fail to engage me in several attempts since then.
    • 1/5
      Fairly dull.