PositiveThe London Review of Books (UK)The natural world which it describes with such rapt attention is cupped in the larger receptacle of a vivid and sinister dream, a dream we seem to have had many times before and which on each retelling leads to the same scene of horror at its climax ... a study in dread.
Peter Carey
PositiveThe London Review of BooksThat Parrot and Olivier in America doesn’t simply fall apart is the result of Carey’s having seen that the very incompatibility of the two stories was what was interesting about them. The challenge of the novel became to create an artistic whole out of such unlike materials, a challenge which Carey meets by making the disparity between John Larrit and Olivier de Garmont the subject of his book. At the simplest level, Parrot and Olivier in America is about two men of different background, social status, character, temperament and experience, who, finding themselves flung together by circumstance, at first dislike each other intensely, but come in time to find a measure of mutual respect, friendship, even love. But the novel’s interest in the immiscibility of Parrot and Olivier extends beyond character to structure and style. They take it in turns to tell the story and with quite distinct voices.
