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greybeard49's review against another edition
4.0
Eclectic group of observations and characters which epitomise Sydney for Carey. I found it really entertaining and quality of the writing is first class.
margaret21's review against another edition
4.0
Sydney, and Australia even, have not been high on my hit-list of must-see places. Till now. Now Peter Carey's made me want to go. This is a thoroughly idiosyncratic take on the city. You won't read about its monuments or its foodie credentials. But you will have a take on its history and how it came from being home to the aboriginal people to a convict settlement, to a busy and often beautiful city on a stunning coastline. This via a series of escapades and conversations with groups of old friends there. It's pacey, funny, eccentric. Read it.
peter_fischer's review against another edition
3.0
Almost incredible that the legendary Carey (I have all his books, mostly first editions) would write a pedestrian book like this: why? As far as I know Carey is from rural Victoria and has never lived in Sydney (?), although he is obviously familiar with it. A mystery!
edgeworth's review
4.0
Peter Carey was born in country Victoria and raised in Melbourne, but it’s clear from many of his novels that his heart truly belongs to Sydney – even though, as he explains in the opening to this book, “I did not come to live in Sydney until I was almost forty and even then I carried in my baggage a typical Melbournian [sic] distrust of that vulgar crooked convict town.” (The fact that he misspells Melburnian is perhaps the best proof that he is a proper Sydneysider.) Carey ultimately settled in New York City, but 30 Days in Sydney – part travelogue, part memoir – details a month he spent revisiting his adopted hometown in 2000, the city’s Olympic year.
In both fiction and non-fiction, Carey has a way of beautifully capturing a place. I’ve been to Sydney for perhaps three cumulative weeks in my life and can’t really claim to know it, but the way Carey describes the place makes it stand out in my head as clear as anywhere I’ve ever been: the lush subtropical heat, the parks of palm and fig trees, the huge sandstone cliffs along the coast, the “great height and dizzy steel” of the bridge, and the dazzling expanse of the cerulean harbour itself, the greatest natural anchorage in the world, branching into a thousand secret coves and inlets.
Much of the book is fictionalised; Carey gives all his friends false names, and their conversations have that same wonderful patter as the characters in his novels; rambunctious people ear-bashing, arguing, cutting across each other – garrulous figures who never fail to say what they think. Like Mark Twain, Carey is a writer who will never let the truth get in the way of a good story. One of my favourite stories in 30 Days in Sydney concerns a pair of houses on Pittwater, a semi-wild part of Sydney’s urban fringe, where Carey and some of his friends lived for a number of years. In 1994, during a dreadful bushfire season (and after Carey had moved to New York), those two old houses full of so many wonderful shared memories came under threat as the fire front came down the peninsula:
With the red glow of fires all about them, Sheridan and Jack had stayed there one last night. They cooked a final meal, and at half past four in the morning, as the fire jumped the last break and spread in a great whoosh across the crowns of eucalypt, they boarded Jack’s rowing boat, pulled off into the bay, and watched the houses burn.
A moving image – probably embellished, but who cares?
Carey touches many other things throughout the book: Aboriginal dispossession, the corruption of the New South Wales elite, the experiences of early settlers, the Rum Rebellion, the Blue Mountains, sailing (including the dreadful storm of the 1998 Sydney-Hobart yacht race, in which six people died) and quite a lot more, considering it’s a short book.
Actually it’s 248 pages, but I read it in two days, since Carey is so wonderfully readable. I imagine you’d get less out of it if you weren’t at all familiar with Sydney, but I loved it.
In both fiction and non-fiction, Carey has a way of beautifully capturing a place. I’ve been to Sydney for perhaps three cumulative weeks in my life and can’t really claim to know it, but the way Carey describes the place makes it stand out in my head as clear as anywhere I’ve ever been: the lush subtropical heat, the parks of palm and fig trees, the huge sandstone cliffs along the coast, the “great height and dizzy steel” of the bridge, and the dazzling expanse of the cerulean harbour itself, the greatest natural anchorage in the world, branching into a thousand secret coves and inlets.
Much of the book is fictionalised; Carey gives all his friends false names, and their conversations have that same wonderful patter as the characters in his novels; rambunctious people ear-bashing, arguing, cutting across each other – garrulous figures who never fail to say what they think. Like Mark Twain, Carey is a writer who will never let the truth get in the way of a good story. One of my favourite stories in 30 Days in Sydney concerns a pair of houses on Pittwater, a semi-wild part of Sydney’s urban fringe, where Carey and some of his friends lived for a number of years. In 1994, during a dreadful bushfire season (and after Carey had moved to New York), those two old houses full of so many wonderful shared memories came under threat as the fire front came down the peninsula:
With the red glow of fires all about them, Sheridan and Jack had stayed there one last night. They cooked a final meal, and at half past four in the morning, as the fire jumped the last break and spread in a great whoosh across the crowns of eucalypt, they boarded Jack’s rowing boat, pulled off into the bay, and watched the houses burn.
A moving image – probably embellished, but who cares?
Carey touches many other things throughout the book: Aboriginal dispossession, the corruption of the New South Wales elite, the experiences of early settlers, the Rum Rebellion, the Blue Mountains, sailing (including the dreadful storm of the 1998 Sydney-Hobart yacht race, in which six people died) and quite a lot more, considering it’s a short book.
Actually it’s 248 pages, but I read it in two days, since Carey is so wonderfully readable. I imagine you’d get less out of it if you weren’t at all familiar with Sydney, but I loved it.
captainfez's review against another edition
4.0
Ostensibly a diary of Carey's return to Sydney, this book is an affectionate portrait of the beautifully grubby city ringed by bush and sea.
If you're familiar with Sydney you'll get more out of this, but it's well worth a read if only for a reminder of some of the difficulties that beset the joint.
If you're familiar with Sydney you'll get more out of this, but it's well worth a read if only for a reminder of some of the difficulties that beset the joint.
tricky's review against another edition
3.0
Carey takes us in this short novella through Sydney, looking at the past to his own memories of the place he loves. The cast of characters are engaging and it is just a wonderful capture of time and place.
I really enjoyed this book, the words, the rhythm, the descriptions and just being wrapped for a short time intimately into a big city.
I really enjoyed this book, the words, the rhythm, the descriptions and just being wrapped for a short time intimately into a big city.
boyblue's review against another edition
3.0
Peter Carey can write, he can also be pretty damn smug at times.
I like Peter Carey the writer, I don't like Peter Carey the Advertising Executive. Unfortunately, you get a little too much of the latter in this book. Lunches at Rockpool etc.
As an ode to Sydney the book was still pretty strong. Weaving in Sydney's history with the post-Olympic zeitgeist at the turn of the millennium. Amazing how prescient the constant referral to firestick farming among his friend group was for a wider Sydney discourse 20 years on. Also great to see a straightforward explanation for why Sydney and Australia is ravaged by bushfires. The attempt to describe Sydney through the four elements worked only in getting Carey sniffing out the stories he needed. Although the recognition and worship of water was perfect.
In a strange turn of events I just so happened to watch a documentary about Richard Leplastrier a few weeks ago and so he jumped off the page at me. I'm sure it's not news to anyone 20 years on. If you haven't looked at some of the homes he designed do yourself a favour and check them out. My ignorance of the rest of Carey's inner circle didn't diminish my enjoyment of their tales. The comments about a lack of feminine presence in the book I think is misguided. This is a man visiting his best mates, who in this city all happen to be men. There's also a little explanation in one of the stories told by Carey's friend Sheridan. Sydney and Australia more broadly is built on mateship.
If you live in Sydney or have spent time there this book will be enlightening, enjoyable, and potentially frustrating. If you haven't been to Sydney this book won't be a good read, not only because it doesn't work for the uninitiated but also because no writing can ever do the city justice. Standing on the edge of the harbour is the only way to understand why the city continues to call to Mr Carey (A Melbournite who now lives in New York).
Carey quotes Anthony Trollope at the start of the book and that best represents Sydney's beauty.
I like Peter Carey the writer, I don't like Peter Carey the Advertising Executive. Unfortunately, you get a little too much of the latter in this book. Lunches at Rockpool etc.
As an ode to Sydney the book was still pretty strong. Weaving in Sydney's history with the post-Olympic zeitgeist at the turn of the millennium. Amazing how prescient the constant referral to firestick farming among his friend group was for a wider Sydney discourse 20 years on. Also great to see a straightforward explanation for why Sydney and Australia is ravaged by bushfires. The attempt to describe Sydney through the four elements worked only in getting Carey sniffing out the stories he needed. Although the recognition and worship of water was perfect.
In a strange turn of events I just so happened to watch a documentary about Richard Leplastrier a few weeks ago and so he jumped off the page at me. I'm sure it's not news to anyone 20 years on. If you haven't looked at some of the homes he designed do yourself a favour and check them out. My ignorance of the rest of Carey's inner circle didn't diminish my enjoyment of their tales. The comments about a lack of feminine presence in the book I think is misguided. This is a man visiting his best mates, who in this city all happen to be men. There's also a little explanation in one of the stories told by Carey's friend Sheridan. Sydney and Australia more broadly is built on mateship.
If you live in Sydney or have spent time there this book will be enlightening, enjoyable, and potentially frustrating. If you haven't been to Sydney this book won't be a good read, not only because it doesn't work for the uninitiated but also because no writing can ever do the city justice. Standing on the edge of the harbour is the only way to understand why the city continues to call to Mr Carey (A Melbournite who now lives in New York).
Carey quotes Anthony Trollope at the start of the book and that best represents Sydney's beauty.
"I despair of being able to convey to any reader my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour. I have seen nothing equal to it in the way of landlocked scenery, - nothing, second to it. Dublin Bay, the Bay of Spezia, New York and the Cove of Cork are all picturesquely fine. Bantry Bay, with the nooks of sea running up to Glengarrif, is very lovely. But they are not the equal of Sydney either in shape, in colour, or in variety. I have never seen Naples, or Rio Janeiro, or Lisbon; - but from the description and pictures I am led to think that none of them can possess such a world of loveliness of water as lies within Sydney Harbour."
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