 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
My Life as a Fake
By Peter Carey
Knopf $45
 The roots of Peter Carey's multi-layered new novel lies in Australia's greatest literary hoax, the 'Ern Malley affair.' In 1944, two prominent figures penned some pseudo-modernist poetry, invented biographical details on the supposedly-deceased Malley, and laughed all the way to the pub when Max Harris, editor of a literary magazine, judged the pretentious concoctions the work of a genius.
Peter Carey has breathed new life into the myth, creating a hoaxer, the tragic Christopher Chubb, and a fake poet, 'Bob McCorkle,' who died at 24, leaving writings for his sister to forward to magazine editor, David Weiss, whose humiliation ends in suicide.
The gothic McCorkle figure, acknowledged by Carey as a Frankenstein - the opening quote is from author Mary Shelley: 'I beheld the wretch - the miserable monster whom I had created' - turns on Chubb to haunt his creator, abducting the latter's young daughter in Melbourne, before fleeing with her to pre-independent Malaya.
Chubb pursues them to Penang, where a chance meeting with a Tamil, the fascinating K.G. Chomley, gives him an opportunity to settle the score with the 'monster', for the Indian is an expert at preparing poisons, a skill learnt when fighting the occupying Japanese in WW2.
In Chomley's house, Chubb reads the labels on jars, 'Cat Fish Gall', 'Sting Ray Spine', 'Dendang Beetle', musing, 'At the time I thought it was mumbo-jumbo, but I was wrong... The powders are the worst - powdered millipede, for instance. A puff of air and you are dead.'
Chubb's search for his daughter and McCorkle, successful but hardly satisfactory, is recounted in 1985 by the novel's narrator, an English editor named Sarah Wode-Douglass, who visited Malaya a decade earlier and listened to Chubb's stories, all the while hoping he would hand over what she believed were McCorkle's unpublished poetic gems.
After obsessively pursuing the hapless Australian, now working in a Chinese bicycle repair shop, Wode-Douglass learns that McCorkle works do exist, notably a volume with the same title as this novel, but are not to be gained easily.
Standouts are the dissolute Chubb, Wode-Douglass, with a secret lesbian life in London, her travel companion, poet John Slater, and of course the 'miserable monster' McCorkle, a genius who spends years classifying Malay flora and fauna.
Enriched by tropical smells and colorful language, the novel brims with complexity and is further enhanced by superb presentation.
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