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Title: Amnesia
Author: Peter Carey
Narrator: Colin Friels
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
Language: English
Release date: 11-06-14
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
Has a young Australian woman declared cyber war on the United States? The Justice Department thinks so. Or was her Angel Worm intended only to open the prison doors of those unfortunates detained by Australia's harsh immigration policies? Did America suffer collateral damage? Can she be extradited to a country with the death penalty? Is she innocent? Can she be saved? Enter her mother, the actress Celine Baillieux.
With Celine comes the outrageous Woody Townes, a Melbourne property developer, millionaire, and patron of left wing causes. Murray delivers half a million dollars bail to the court, appoints a distinguished lawyer, and hires an old mate to write a biography to vindicate the young woman.
The old mate is Felix Moore, known to his fellow journalists as Felix Moore-or-less correct. His politics are far too left. His grasp of reality is sometimes unreliable. He is a magnet for law suits. His career is over, and then he gets this chance. I had fought the good fight all my life , he confesses, but I had also become an awful creature along the way.
It will be our great good fortune to live inside Felix's comic, cowardly, angry, fundamentally humane character as he attempts to find redemption.
Amnesia is a masterful novel, both dark and funny, whose tangled roots drive deep into the denied history of the United States, the CIA, and its relationship with it's old friend and client, Australia.
Members Reviews:
A vivid book, a little let down by the performance
What made the experience of listening to Amnesia the most enjoyable?
I've only just started listening to audio books, so can't rank it, but how fantastic to be 'reading' in the otherwise dead time while driving, doing chores etc.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Amnesia?
Why the school-ish comprehensions questions ? Surely an open-ended review format would be better?
How could the performance have been better?
By narrator, do you mean in the literary sense, or to indicate the actor reading the piece? If the latter, you mean "reader", not "narrator", and there are unnecessary slips by the reader, especially in pronunciation (see below).
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Again - why the school-ish comprehensions questions ? Surely an open-ended review format would be better?
Any additional comments?
The reader, Colin Friels, for some reason can't pronounce "valium" (I don't think "vaylium" is mere an Australianism), and gives up completely when confronted with a foreign word. Thus "scandale" (French, presumably) is pronounced to rhyme with the Gipsy King's "volare", "reportage" to rhyme with "porridge" and "basso" as "base-oh". If you've ever heard Peter Carey read his own work, you'll know how beautifully the rhythm of his prose delivers when spoken. Friels, though, fudges it. Rushing where he should linger, and making elisions which suggest he's not completely into what he's reading. It's good, enough, I suppose, but I wish they'd had Carey read it himself.
Important reminder.
I'm pleased I now know about the history at the heart of this book. Now want to find out more.
Carey is a very skilled writer, but I felt strangely uninvolved with the characters. Maybe if it was the rather macho delivery of narrator.
