Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Carey, Peter (Vol. 183) - Andro Linklater (review date 7 September 1991)

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Andro Linklater (review date 7 September 1991)

SOURCE: Linklater, Andro. “Landscape with Peasants.” Spectator 267, no. 8513 (7 September 1991): 34.

[In the following review, Linklater applauds Carey's descriptive abilities in The Tax Inspector, though notes that the title character is the novel's weakest.]

In the old days, when kindly scientists were still trying to develop ‘smart’ weapons as the humane way to deal out death and destruction, television news once showed a subversive clip of a submarine missile being tested. It was crammed with about ＄10 millions worth of computers and enough information to navigate itself from the ocean bed through the earth's atmosphere and down the throat of a passing cod in the South Atlantic, but through some flaw in its make-up, it chose instead to describe two and a half circles of fluffy smoke and explode in a shower of orange sparks just above the surface of the North Atlantic. If...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Norma Jean Richey (review date summer 1989)
   2. Andro Linklater (review date 7 September 1991)
   3. Victoria Radin (review date 13 September 1991)
   4. Peter Carey and John F. Baker (interview date 13 December 1991)
   5. Paul Kane (essay date summer 1993)
   6. Carolyn Bliss (review date summer 1996)
   7. David Coad (review date summer 1996)
   8. Philip Hensher (review date 20 September 1997)
   9. Peter Carey and Ramona Koval (interview date September-December 1997)
   10. Anthony J. Hassall (essay date October 1997)
   11. Frank Kermode (review date 16 October 1997)
   12. Richard Eder (review date 1 February 1998)
   13. Brooke Allen (review date 23 February 1998)
   14. Karl Miller (review date 20 April 1998)
   15. Robert Ross (essay date July 1998)
   16. Christer Larsson (essay date October 1999)
   17. D. J. Taylor (review date 8 January 2001)
   18. Ron Charles (review date 18 January 2001)
   19. Thomas Jones (review date 8 February 2001)
   20. Peter Carey and John Bemrose (interview date 26 March 2001)
   21. Robert Ross (review date June 2001)
   22. Peter Porter (review date 25 August 2001)
   23. Andreas Gaile (review date September 2001)
   24. Paul Maliszewski (review date summer 2002)
   25. Cliff Lobe (essay date December 2002)
   26. Kirkus Reviews (review date 1 September 2003)
   27. Hugo Barnacle (review date 22 September 2003)
   28. Peter Porter (review date 27 September 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright