The Chemistry of Tears

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Reviewed By Toni Whitmont, Booktopia Buzz Editor
A new novel from Peter Carey is always cause for celebration and so it is with great excitement that I embarked on the reading of The Chemistry of Tears.

From the very first pages, it is clear that we are in the hands of a writer of great polish and poise, someone who can handle the eccentricities and meanderings of the human heart with delicacy and insight. His descriptions of the grief of Catherine Gehrig, having just discovered the death of her secret lover of thirteen years, are searing. Here, reassuringly, is an author who can write, an author whose promise shown in the late 70s with his short story collections ( The Fat Man in History and War Crimes) has fully matured into writing worthy of two Man Booker prizes, three Miles Franklins, two Commonwealth Writers prizes, plus a host of others, all for good reason!

Once again, Carey employs the device of the dual narrative, something he explored successfully in Parrot and Olivier in America, His Illegal Self and Theft: A Love Story.

This time he gives us the current day Catherine, an horological restorer working at London's Swinburne Museum who is isolating herself in her work in an attempt to forget her loss. Catherine is supposedly restoring a reproduction of Vaucanson's famous mechanical duck, an automaton from the mid eighteenth century which could flap its wings, eat and digest grain. At the same time, she plunges into the world of Henry Brandling, whose journals she uncovers, written in the 1850s.

Brandling has embarked on a journey from England that takes him into the depths of the Black Forest in an attempt to have one of these ducks made for him to bring back home to his consumptive child. Brandling too is dealing with grief - he has lost his first child to the disease, his wife has cut off from the family emotionally, he may well lose his second child. Catherine becomes obsessed with Brandling's journals and both of these characters are consumed with bringing something mechanical to life - and here we have it. Two people mad with grief, linked with a machine from the dawn of the industrial age, just at the time when the mechanical age seems to be in its catastrophic death throes.

In an interview on ABC Radio last week, Peter Carey said the following: What do I want people to think? I want them to think that they have walked into a work of art, that they are pleased by the beauty of the language and that they are astonished by things that they haven't thought of before.

Asked what makes great art, he said:
Ambiguity is what makes us treasure great art. The pleasure is returning to it again and again, grasping it and feeling it slip away. That's why great art lasts.

In The Chemistry of Tears, Carey gives us tantalising glimpses into the questions that have haunted so many great artists over the centuries, from way before the mechanical ingenuity of the automatons - what is life? what is a body? do we have a soul? how are we connected? This book is an emotional exploration of love, death, loss and incandescent life. The Chemistry of Tears takes as its starting point the mysteries of life and death, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention, and the body's astonishing chemistry of love and feeling. This is Carey at his best, the Carey that will no doubt be on the judges' lists yet again.

In The Press
'The Chemistry of Tears – alive with the vivid evocation of place and period that is always Carey's forte – juxtaposes love for a dead partner with love for a dying son . . . A novel by one of the present day's most unconventionally creative writers. Oddball characters are propelled along zigzagging narrative channels, connections made with whimsical aplomb. As always, too, everything is burnished with vitalisingly poetic images. The Chemistry of Tears isn't only about life and inventiveness: it overflows with them.' Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

'Mr Carey is one of the finest living writers in English. His best books satisfy both intellectually and emotionally; he is lyrical yet never forgets the imperative to entertain.’ The Economist

'Masterly historical fiction that both talks about now, and makes the past seem immediate . . . I loved this book for its mysteries, its hinted back stories, its reserve, and its underlying complexity.' Lucy Daniel, Daily Telegraph

'Characters that beguile and convince, prose that dances or is as careful as poetry, an inventive plot that teases and makes the heart quicken or hurt, paced with masterly precision, yet with a space for the ideas to breathe and expand in dialogue with the reader, unusual settings of place and time: this tender tour de force of the imagination succeeds on all fronts.' Rebecca K. Morrison, The Independent

'A master-class of writing and human insight is to be found in Peter Carey's new novel with its thrillingly off-kilter focus . . . There is so much powerful human emotion rising from the pages.' Liam Heylin, Irish Examiner

'The Chemistry of Tears is yet another triumph for its creator, breath-catchingly beautiful and tender in places, with strange and shocking revelations slowly revealed.' Camilla Pia, The List

'Peter Carey's [is an] intricately constructed narrative, with its tender, astringent reflections on the nature of love and mortality, human ingenuity and human destructiveness . . . The fine bloom on his writing, the sharp, green bite of emotion and the pellucid observation seem entirely unaffected by success and a (well-deserved) place in the modern canon.' Jane Shilling and David Sexton, London Evening Standard 

'Once again, Carey the alchemist takes his base materials and produces something rare and prized . . . The Chemistry of Tears is about madness in various forms: the madness of grief, of creative ambition, of expecting technology to bring salvation, of trying to find prophecy in chaos. It has a sense of hope and wonder . . . I devoured The Chemistry of Tears in a day.' J.D. Ellevson, frombooktobook.wordpress.com

'Carey's latest book is just as beautifully written and entertaining as its predecessors. Written in his signature style, moving and witty at the same time, his narrative takes hold right from the beginning and maintains its pace throughout ... Profoundly moving but leavened with Carey's characteristic whimsical humour together with his refined and polished narrative style, this is a most delightful read.' Mary Ann Elliott, the chronicle.com.au