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The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

The Chemistry of Tears
Peter Carey

Was $39.95 NOW $34.95

The long affair had been kept secret from their colleagues at London's Swinburne Museum and now she must grieve in private.  Or almost.  In an act of compassion, the head of her department gives Catherine a very particular project, something to cling onto: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a nineteenth-century automaton, a beautiful mechanical bird.

Once she discovers that the box also contains the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, one obsession merges into another.  Who was Henry Brandling?  Who was the mysterious, visionary clockmaker he hired to make a gift for his ailing son?  And what was the end result that now sits in pieces in Catherine's studio?

The Chemistry of Tears is a portrait of love and loss that is both wildly entertaining and profoundly moving, simultaneously delicate and anarchic.

At its heart is an image only the masterful Peter Carey could breathe such life into - an object made of equal parts magic, love, madness and science, a delight that contains the seeds of our age's downfall.

'This fable-like study of love, loss, paranoia and obsession [is] far-reaching.' Herald Sun

'Shows the playful side of Peter Carey at full stretch . . . Surprise is a constant narrative device . . . as are the hidden, disguised, or unguessed at meanings of things . . . Replete with diversions, jokes and red herrings . . . The Chemistry of Tears is at once exuberant and chastening in its portrayal of loss and attempts at amelioration.' Peter Pierce, Canberra Times   

'[Carey] remains a writer with an unerring sense for the perverse in human affairs. The continual and guilty delight of these early sections, the funniest, most cutting and anarchic, is that they acknowledge what we know to be true but dare not say: grief gives delirious licence to all those behaviours we otherwise hold in check.' Geordie Williamson, Weekend Australian


 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

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