Pinocchio endures; why, I’m not sure ... Amid this glut, the novelist and playwright Edward Carey has had the inspired idea to cut the marionette loose and focus instead on Geppetto, the lonely old woodcutter who carves Pinocchio from an enchanted block of pine, giving him form and life — which is about as close as men get to immaculate conception, even in fantasy. Carey’s odd duck of a book is less a proper novel than a riff on the entwined themes of fatherhood and creative spark ... What keeps this book afloat, as it were, is the voice Carey gives to Geppetto. The author — whose previous books include Little, a historical novel about Madame Tussaud, and a Dickensian-style trilogy for middle grade readers — is a master of the dusty yet droll tone ... If that prose doesn’t delight you, this is not your book ... his meditations on paternal love and the ache of separation can be moving ... At other times, the slender novel set entirely inside a big stomach feels like a stunt — entertaining, clever, but a stunt nonetheless ... Carey’s dedication haunted me as I finished The Swallowed Man, and enriched it.
Carey’s version of Pinocchio has all the strangeness and pathos of the original tale with none of the Hollywood fluff ... original, inventive and compelling ... a richly textured experience ... Although it was written before the effects of Covid-19 became known it’s an apt novel for lockdown, dealing as it does with isolation and what keeps us human when we are isolated. Readers will feel for Guiseppe, recognise the emptiness of his experience as the man in the belly of the large fish, cut off from the world and most importantly from his beloved little wooden boy, Pinocchio ... Just magical.
Like Carey’s previous novels, The Swallowed Man includes Carey’s own art, and fans of his macabre yet oddly satisfying visual work will have much to enjoy here, from daguerreotype photographs of the ship captain’s family to a 3-D rendering of Joseph’s self-portrait bust made of shells, kelp and glass. The book also revisits themes that Carey has considered before, about the meaning and nature of art ... stands out among Carey’s other works ... has neither the verve of Pinocchio nor any insight into Collodi’s classic novel. Nevertheless, Carey is a playful writer whose charming sentences are works of careful craftsmanship ... This isn’t the Pinocchio of your childhood. Instead, Carey has written something more cerebral, an existential fairy tale for adults told by an old artist considering the tragedy of life.
