In an author’s note included with the press release for A Long Way from Home, two-time Booker-winner Peter Carey says that this is the novel “I spent my whole life not knowing how to write.” After having explored his Australian inheritance from almost every conceivable angle, Carey admits that he’d always “avoided a direct confrontation with race, and the question of what it means to be a white Australian.”At first glance, there seems little here to carry the weight of Carey’s admission. It is 1954, and Irene and Titch Bobs move to the small town of Bacchus Marsh, thirty-three miles from Melbourne, with dreams of opening a car dealership. They are plagued by Titch’s overbearing and abusive father, Dangerous Dan, and befriended by their next door neighbour, “a fair-haired bachelor with a strong jaw and absent bottom,” named Willie Bachhuber, a disgraced schoolteacher, radio quiz show champ and man on the run from his past. In an effort to boost the reputation of their fledgling dealership, the Bobs enter the Redex Trial, a gruelling endurance rally round the continent. They convince Willie, who is obsessed with maps, to serve as navigator.

Source: thestar March 23, 2018 10:30 UTC