Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Carey, Peter (Vol. 183) - David Coad (review date summer 1996)

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David Coad (review date summer 1996)

SOURCE: Coad, David. Review of The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, by Peter Carey. World Literature Today 70, no. 3 (summer 1996): 757-58.

[In the following review, Coad notes the postmodern style of The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith and comments on Carey's decision to live in the United States as an expatriate writer.]

Peter Carey's fifth novel, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, won the 1994 Age Book of the Year Award in Australia. This is Carey's first novel to be totally written outside his native country, since he has been a resident of New York for over five years now. The title makes us think of the picaresque and the hero's eighteenth-century namesake, Tristram Shandy. Carey's Tristan, however, has been democratized to an anonymous Smith.

Billed as a postmodern tragicomedy, Tristan Smith certainly falls into the post-modern allegorical genre. There is a...

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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