His Illegal Self [Hardcover]

This novel has a lot to recommend it: original, compelling, descriptive writing, a unique plot, and characters that are distinctive and memorable.

But in the midst of the story, there's a gap -- one that was too difficult for this reader to navigate. We are to believe that "the mother" -- aka Anna Xenos -- who is on the cusp of academic success decides to take a huge risk in bringing Che, the young boy, to visit his birth mother. But why? The motivation is never explored. She is treated as a peripheral member of the underground, as an inferior being by the boy's grandmother, and in essence, seems to have moved on from the passions of college years. Why risk it all without an internal motivation? And why go to Australia when there are certainly many countries (Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica) that are closer and also provide anonymity?

Carey is far better in his lush descriptions of nature in the communes of Australia. He devotes page after page painting a fine portrait of the wild natural beauty of the land. What I wanted him to do was spend equal time in descriptions of the inner life of Anna; for that, there were broad strokes. He does do that admirably for Che; it's difficult to create a plausible child who is not too cloying or too mature or too naive. Che is none of these things; he is truly an original.

In short, this is a fine book with some flaws that make it less than an extraordinary one.

For the portion of the United States population under the age of 30 or so, the anti-war activism of the 1960s and '70s probably seems as remote as some obscure medieval conflict. In recent novels like Dana Spiotta's EAT THE DOCUMENT and Neil Gordon's THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, talented authors have given us glimpses of that era in the form of middle-aged fugitive radicals who surface in the present and now must come to terms with the consequences of their youthful actions. Now, two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey thrusts us into the heart of the era, with the profound and moving story of a young boy and his protector forced to face those circumstances in real time.

The year is 1972, the end of the Vietnam War almost three years away and Richard Nixon, the President first elected on a cynical promise to end it, on the verge of re-election. Seven-year-old Ché David Selkirk, under the care of his maternal grandmother after his radical activist parents are arrested following a violent demonstration, divides his time between a luxury apartment on New York's Upper East Side and a rustic lakeside retreat in upstate New York. His privileged, sheltered life changes abruptly when a woman by the name of Anna Xenos, known only to Ché as "Dial," takes him one afternoon for what his grandmother believes is a brief, clandestine reunion with his mother. Instead, the outing turns into a trip across the United States, shepherded and financed by members of "the Movement," from bus station to safehouse to motel and ultimately to Queensland, Australia. Ché aches to be reunited with his parents and fantasizes about the possibility that Dial, an English professor and friend of his mother, may even be her.

Ché and Dial eventually land in a commune known as the Crystal Community, where Dial has purchased 14 acres of desolate ground populated by a handful of ramshackle structures and a group of equally dubious inhabitants. Undermining the prototypical "peace and love" ideology of the time, the "hippies" are as suspicious and unwelcoming as any middle-class suburbanites, even going so far as to demand Ché and Dial rid themselves of Che's kitten, Buck. In this environment, Carey sketches with painstaking tenderness and care the emotionally complex relationship between Dial and Ché --- sometimes warm and more often tense and challenging --- that's at the heart of the novel.

At the commune, Ché is befriended by Trevor Dobbs ("a strong man, sleek as a porpoise, sheathed in a good half-inch-thick coat of fat which seemed to feed his brown, taut skin, giving it a healthy fish-oil kind of shine"), a tough and oddly compassionate character who becomes a father figure, teaching him skills that will enable him to survive in the bush and imparting both his rugged values and his barely contained paranoia about those in authority.

The success of HIS ILLEGAL SELF rests on two pillars: Carey's acute insight into the mind of Ché, and the consistent lyricism of writing that gives life to the harsh beauty of the Australian landscape. Of the boy, finishing a gardening project for Trevor that conjures up memories of lakeside summers with his grandmother, he writes: "Then he did cry, secretly, mourning everything he lost, all the cold empty hollows, the marrow stolen from his bones." And, in one of the countless arresting examples of his keenly observant prose, the author pictures for us "the inky green of rain forest where arm-thick vines wound around trees with skins like elephants. Beyond the hut, behind the car, the lonely darkness was bleeding along the course of Remus Creek and washing up into the muggy hills."

When Trevor and Dial enlist an Australian lawyer of questionable competence in a plan to return Ché to his grandmother, the life they've been living in the rugged wilderness begins to unravel. As befits a novel of this maturity and power, HIS ILLEGAL SELF doesn't falter by trying to bring the story to a close in any kind of tidy fashion. The ending is as fitting as it is startling, all the more satisfying because of the careful craftsmanship that leads up to it.

In an interview on the occasion of the publication of his last novel, Carey said that he's motivated by "the thought that one might actually make something very beautiful, that had never existed before." By that standard he has more than satisfied his goal in this rich and complex work.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg (mwn52@aol.com)

Anna Xenos, a.k.a. Dial, was supposed to perform a simple task -- deliver a 7-year-old boy named Che (but called Jay by his guardian/grandmother) to her old friend in hiding, his mother. Why is Che's mum hiding, you ask? A Weatherman. SDS, you see. Think 60's. Think hippies. Think things going terribly wrong on the way to Che's Mommy, Susan Selkirk. And the next thing you know, a simple escorting favor for an old friend turns into a full-blown kidnapping, landing the hapless Dial and the excitedly bewildered Che in the Land Down Under (Carey's home turf).

The book contained some beautiful excerpts and turns of phrase. At times, in fact, I stopped and reread odd but compelling lines like "Trevor turned and saw Dial running at him, her yellow hair rising in snaky waves, her titties like puppies fighting inside her shirt." It's clear you are in the hands of a real "writer's writer," a man whose poetic license will never expire.

But alas, there were problems, too. For one, Carey hitched his star to that scourge of modern writers', dialogue without quotation marks. Ignoring this convention means readers often have to reread NOT because they want to savor a beautiful expression, but because they are unsure about who is talking. Also, once the book hits the badlands of Oz, it mucks down a bit. Carey's staccato sentences and short, punchy paragraphs go on and on, deep as the verdant landscape he describes. We see how a 60's-style commune operates in Australia, we meet some organic consumers unlike the kind you find pushing carts in Whole Foods, and -- like it or no -- you get to know Trevor, the feral grown-up orphan who both attracts and repels Dial and Che. Meantime, the game is up on Dial playing Mom. The boy learns more and more. Trevor gardens. Dial mopes. The boy wanders. The hippie neighbors look on distrustfully at the Ugly American. After starting out a plot book, the narrative evolves into a character-driven one. Not all readers will handle the transformation well.

Ultimately, Carey carries the day and in the end, Dial sets the tone with a dramatic denouement featuring a most surprising twist. Well, not totally surprising, but more unexpected than not. Yes, you may lose threads of dialogue along the way, and yes, you may not like a lot of the sad sacks you meet in the Land of Oz, but you must acknowledge that Carey is a talented writer. My Ambivalent Self gives Carey 3.5 stars, but I'm certain that fans of previous Carey novels, as well as readers who find desultory narratives dwelling on character fascinating, will find it a 4 or 5. If, on the other hand, you're convinced you would object to a fast start that stops to mosey around a bit, you might do better with the next book in your to-be-read pile. Know thyself, then, before considering this book.

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