It has been many years since I read any Peter Carey: Oscar and Lucinda, and I remember nothing of it. Perhaps because of that I was somewhat thrown by his Collected Stories. Not in the sense of how well-written they are, but rather the strange dystopian worlds many of them seem to inhabit. There is something raw, brutal and dysfunctional about many of these landscapes and – more specifically – the people who inhabit them.
In the end I think I admired the stories more for their craft than enjoyed them for their narrative – which I guess is fair enough. Especially as the exercise is tempting me to go back to one of his novels, perhaps The Chemistry of Tears.
Ian Gouge - Writer 