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dm_aus's review against another edition
DNF
Made it to 115 pages before I decided it was just tedious and cliche riddled - with no mention of the malware release pitched on the back cover...the only reason I picked it up!
Yawn.
Made it to 115 pages before I decided it was just tedious and cliche riddled - with no mention of the malware release pitched on the back cover...the only reason I picked it up!
Yawn.
rickyb77's review against another edition
1.0
Terrible!
I was so keen on reading this book. The blurb on the back cover was the story I wanted to read. I’m a little confused about whether Carey and his publishers genuinely believe this is the book he wrote, or if he just literally lost the plot and didn’t bother trying to find it again. It’s a shame because the story on the back of the book sounded amazing! If the blurb was written to accurately reflect the story the book told, I might have rated it better.
Or, more honestly, I would never have picked the book up in the first place. Sadly, that is what I think the publisher’s intention was - they knew they had a shit story on their hands that no dedicated reader would want to read, so they bullshitted the blurb. And it worked.
But, fool me once, as they say. You won’t get me again Peter Carey.
I was so keen on reading this book. The blurb on the back cover was the story I wanted to read. I’m a little confused about whether Carey and his publishers genuinely believe this is the book he wrote, or if he just literally lost the plot and didn’t bother trying to find it again. It’s a shame because the story on the back of the book sounded amazing! If the blurb was written to accurately reflect the story the book told, I might have rated it better.
Or, more honestly, I would never have picked the book up in the first place. Sadly, that is what I think the publisher’s intention was - they knew they had a shit story on their hands that no dedicated reader would want to read, so they bullshitted the blurb. And it worked.
But, fool me once, as they say. You won’t get me again Peter Carey.
piotrjawor's review against another edition
2.0
Gdyby nie fotografia autora na skrzydełku okładki - pomyślałbym, że to jakiś zbieg okoliczności.
Ale - niestety - to jest właśnie ten Peter Carey.
I niemal przez dobrych 300 stron tej książki, nie chce się wierzyć, że napisał ją autor "Oskara..", "Prawdziwej historii...", "The Tax Inspector" czy "Parrot and Olivier in America".
Jestem pełen uznania dla samego siebie, że doczytałem do końca.
Ale - niestety - to jest właśnie ten Peter Carey.
I niemal przez dobrych 300 stron tej książki, nie chce się wierzyć, że napisał ją autor "Oskara..", "Prawdziwej historii...", "The Tax Inspector" czy "Parrot and Olivier in America".
Jestem pełen uznania dla samego siebie, że doczytałem do końca.
laurencenz's review against another edition
3.0
I liked it, but found the construction unnecessarily difficult. The frame of the story was the has-been journalist using material from 2 subjects on cassettes - it seemed that the grammar/syntax/tenses were all messed up at times. I am sure they weren't, and I love his writing, but in this novel the structure got in the way and the insights I was hoping for, did not materialise.
There was a great story inside waiting to be told, but it somehow never surfaced. I as excited for the first 100 pages, but by the end I felt disappointed.
There was a great story inside waiting to be told, but it somehow never surfaced. I as excited for the first 100 pages, but by the end I felt disappointed.
kchisholm's review against another edition
1.0
The blurb on the back of AMNESIA reads exactly like that of a really good thriller. A threat that unleashes something frightening in the world, and the battle to find the perpetrator.
Which seemed, by the end of the book, to be written for another AMNESIA, somewhere in a parallel universe. One where the book we were reading actually addressed the major plot elements, rather than immediately meandering off into something or other about an ex-journalist / ghost writer who had a bit of a hump up with the world who ... something.
It's certainly possible to see what Carey was trying to do here. There's obviously an attempt at humour and lashings of irony. A bored observation of the boring concept of boring threats instigated by the world's biggest baddie. Or at least that's a best guess.
Which would be perfectly fair enough. It's not like the concept of political interference and corruption, cyber-threats and big-power lording it over supposed allies is new fare in the world of thrillers. There is a reasonable argument to be had about it being done to death. The difference is that in most of that style of book that this reader has read, the actual threats, the players, and the consequences are explored, analysed and frequently even explained.
In the case of AMNESIA it doesn't feel like any of that is even attempted. Added to that was a rather predictable pattern of "left and right" Australian political thought, yet another "perspective" on the 1975 Dismissal and, alas, a somewhat stunning lack of technical validity for the whole worm infection in the first place.
Add to that a tendency to pastiche the Australian-ness of the setting, and AMNESIA rapidly lurched into something that seemed more like a self-involved, navel gazing, rights of passage for some drunken old journo than anything like a thriller.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-amnesia-peter-carey
Which seemed, by the end of the book, to be written for another AMNESIA, somewhere in a parallel universe. One where the book we were reading actually addressed the major plot elements, rather than immediately meandering off into something or other about an ex-journalist / ghost writer who had a bit of a hump up with the world who ... something.
It's certainly possible to see what Carey was trying to do here. There's obviously an attempt at humour and lashings of irony. A bored observation of the boring concept of boring threats instigated by the world's biggest baddie. Or at least that's a best guess.
Which would be perfectly fair enough. It's not like the concept of political interference and corruption, cyber-threats and big-power lording it over supposed allies is new fare in the world of thrillers. There is a reasonable argument to be had about it being done to death. The difference is that in most of that style of book that this reader has read, the actual threats, the players, and the consequences are explored, analysed and frequently even explained.
In the case of AMNESIA it doesn't feel like any of that is even attempted. Added to that was a rather predictable pattern of "left and right" Australian political thought, yet another "perspective" on the 1975 Dismissal and, alas, a somewhat stunning lack of technical validity for the whole worm infection in the first place.
Add to that a tendency to pastiche the Australian-ness of the setting, and AMNESIA rapidly lurched into something that seemed more like a self-involved, navel gazing, rights of passage for some drunken old journo than anything like a thriller.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-amnesia-peter-carey
charity_royall_331's review against another edition
3.0
As always, I was impressed with Carey's ability to adopt a completely different style and tone for each of his books; this one changes POV halfway through. But this one didn't resonate with me as much as others; I felt it was a little scattershot, although perhaps this is by design: so is Felix Moore's life when we meet him. I was lucky enough to attend a reading and Q&A with Peter Carey in which he discussed the 1975 CIA overthrow of the Australian government (part of the background of this book). I'd like to learn more about that and then read this again.
jezmondtutu's review against another edition
2.0
I feel lied to by the blurb. The back cover describes only a very small aspect of the plot. The actual story did not grip me in any way, and the characters did not draw me to like, dislike or have any feels whatsoever. The majority of the book was overwhelmingly an attack on right-wing politics, and a seamless string of ocker Australian references, some of which were so obscure that the book would have no broad appeal outside the Australian market. Not Peter Carey's best work by a long shot.
On a positive note, I listened to this on audio, and the narration by Colin Friels was fantastic.
On a positive note, I listened to this on audio, and the narration by Colin Friels was fantastic.
stevenjcoates's review against another edition
3.0
There was much I liked in this book - a dissection of Labor/left politics and Australian class and culture in the 70s, an unflinching account of the ugly 1943 Battle of Brisbane and a good go of putting into words the very hard to describe magic of coding. I did struggle a bit with the plot/structure though and finish a bit confused about some of what happened.
blueshadow80's review
I hate hearing "australian labour party" not my type of book