My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey

This extremely complex novel outlines a literary hoax uncovered when a man sends work by what he sees as a fictional author to a magazine, which the magazine then publishes. Only, after it has been uncovered the fictional author turns up and haunts the life of the man who sent in the poetry. The book is set in Australia and also in Malaysia where one of the protagonists - Sarah Wode Douglass, a writer tries desperately to uncover the work for her failing literary magazine, she starts to interview Chubb who set up the hoax in order to obtain the manuscript which could then be published.

The book is filled with twists and turns, jumping from one era to another. The second half of the book primarily deals with the kidnapping of Chubb's daughter by the not-so-fictional Bob McCorkle. Chubb spends years in search of the girl, following McCorkle's movements closely but finding that his daughter is no longer his daughter when he finally tracks her down. Many different plot lines come in and out of the book, some with only tenuous connections to other plots but Carey somehow works them mostly believably into the book with a sort of surreal twist to the whole thing and an ending which leaves you thinking.

Most of the central characters in the book are not explored in much depth. Chubb sees himself as a literary genius and he puts down what he says as the lower down tastes of most Australians, and paticularly of the publisher who he originally sends McCorkle's work to, who ends up being sued and is later murdered but the case is rounded off as a suicide. Sarah seems desperate throughout the book to save her own job that has fallen under threat and pursues the story for her own interests and develops a certain affection for Chubb. The man accompanying her on the trip, John Slater who was a friend of her parents does not trust Chubb from the start and attempts to protect Sarah from what he sees as a dangerous enterprise.

Although the different lines of the story span several decades and parts of the world, they are linked together well. I would definitely recommend this book.

Next up: Human, all too human by Fredrich Nietzsche.