So - a friend of mine is going to Greece soon and a friend of his collects honey and I tried some and told her it was the nicest honey I had ever tried (which was true - no exaggeration at all). My friend leaves next week and I thought it would be nice to send over a book with him to the honey collector. BUT, and I struggle to believe this is true, this book is out of print in Australia. This isn't a book by What's His Face No Name - this is Bliss by Peter Carey! What other nation does this to their authors? Really, I'm quite ashamed about this. I walked the city on Friday looking for a copy of this book. In the end I just went into bookshops to shame them. I've had to send the book by mail order from Ireland, of all places. What other book could you possibly send a honey collector, though, if you were to send one from Australia? * * * Previous reviewA very dear friend of mine once wrote to me, after my sending this book to her, to say that this book was flawed. She is probably right, but there are so many things that I love about it I would forgive it almost anything.Firstly, it has one of the greatest opening sentences in lit history (okay, so I'm prone to gross exaggeration) - something like, 'Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death that left the most lasting impression on him'. I think Harry Joy is a wonderful name for a character.The story, in extreme short version and only the very start - is a man has a heart attack and dies. Prior to dying he had the perfect life, wife who loved him, two beautiful kids, job he loves, friends ... and so on. They bring him back to life and he finds, believes, he has actually died and gone to hell. His wife is having an affair, his kids are drug dealers and prostitutes and so on and so forth - everything is the same, nothing is the same. There is a character in this that writes letters he never sends to companies he works for telling them he knows they are evil. Dear god, please do not make that character be me.It is the end of this book that I love the most - a single image at what is close to the very end that has stayed with me forever and ever - Harry's love letter that took seven years to deliver. Now, there is a beautiful thing.
"How to Spoil a Good Plot" a dissertation in form of a novel titled "Bliss" by Peter Carey. Synopsis:Take a great idea. The apparent death and unexpected resuscitation of the main character would do.Develop the aforementioned great idea a step forward. The main character thinking that he actually died, went to Hell and that his own life after-resuscitation is just a day to day performance set up by demonic-characters impersonating his family and friends sounds perfect.Now, this is definitely something. And if you add up that the main character writes down notes comparing the differences between the people he knew before his stroke with those he now believes are performing their roles, the plot you have it's just great with a hint of absurdity. But that's not the purpose of the dissertation you put your nose onto.What Mr Author, needs first and foremost is to spoil a good plot. And that's what Peter Carey does for the remaining two thirds of the book. How he did it? It's quite simple. Just put the absurd element to an extreme, introducing madness, manias of persecution and some deranged characters flirting with lost ambitions, homeopathy, alcohol abuse and - why not? - drugs.Leave behind all the potentially good subplots you started at the beginning of the novel to focus on the madness of the main character and his clumsy need of redemption while in a psychiatric hospital. Forget about mentioning Hell again as the same quality of your prose will lead the readers straight into the infernal abyss leaving them quite confused and with an unbearable urge to put the book aside.Well done! "Bliss" is just ready to be read and, most likely, heavily misunderstood for a decent novel. I repeat: this book is nothing of that sort but the crafty disguise of a masterful dissertation titled "How to Spoil a Good Plot".
What do You think about Bliss (1991)?
Took me awhile to get started, almost didn't pick it back up. But, I'm so glad I did. The last part of the book is an incredibly documented contrast to the prior three quarters of the book. It made me want to change my life. It also made me really sad as it clarified how truly messed up modern society is in many many ways, mainly environmental but also in terms of the way people treat each other and themselves, very insightful! This book is really forward thinking for having been written in the 80s. I loved this book even if it was deeply disturbing, it was a deep reaching wake up call for me.
—Kim
This isn't my favorite of Peter Carey, and I'd hesitate to recommend it to people who haven't read him; it's definitely a first novel, stuffed with digressions and minor characters that don't quite work, and also the satirical tone has an aspect of contempt and despair that could be off-putting even if you like that kind of thing (sort of an early Martin Amis quality). But it's often beautiful and surprising, and it covers a lot of territory— Carey seems equally interested in the emotional and practical concerns of his characters whether they're in an ad agency or a backwoods hippie survivalist commune. And I like stories about people who go through a life-changing experience and reinvent themselves, but then aren't finished changing for all time, and hesitate and renege and have to reinvent themselves some more.
—Eli
Peter Carey tells you how people look, think and feel-each of these in total disharmony with the rest of it and with other people, how each trait and person keeps changing and is completely unreliable, and he even goes to the incestuous, and yet he tells you about the most common feelings of people regarding themselves and others. Some descriptions of the mindwork and of perceptions take my breath away with their accuracy. Finished it, and now I want more peter Carey!Interestingly, his biography combines with the issues of Bliss (if wikipedia got it right): In 1976, Carey moved to Queensland and joined an 'alternative community' named Starlight in Yandina, north of Brisbane. He would write for three weeks, then spend the fourth week working in Sydney. It was during this time that he wrote most of the stories collected in War Crimes, as well as Bliss, his first published novel
—Avital
