Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Carey, Peter (Vol. 183) - Peter Porter (review date 27 September 2003)

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Peter Porter (review date 27 September 2003)

SOURCE: Porter, Peter. “Spooked by a Spoof.” Spectator 293, no. 9138 (27 September 2003): 54, 56.

[In the following review, Porter praises Carey's “inventive” narrative in My Life as a Fake, though notes he is concerned that Carey “is drawn increasingly to archetypal Australian legends.”]

Readers who have heard that Peter Carey's new novel [My Life as a Fake] is a ‘roman à clef’ should be warned that they will need a whole bunch of keys to unlock its mysteries. Carey seems to have decided that one good template deserves another, so that the Ern Malley swindle of 1944 in Melbourne is coupled with a makeover of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the whole topped up with some Somerset Maugham Malayan expatriation and a haunted pursuit out of Mr Norris Changes Trains (the dreadful Schmidt becomes Carey's implacable poet McCorkle). It hardly matters how the...

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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