Winner of the 1988 Booker Prize with Oscar and Lucinda, and also author of Bliss (1981) and Illywhacker (1985), Australian Carey is always an interesting writer - and The Tax Inspector (1991), a dark, perverse, hilariously absurdist work is his best book to date.
Interested in balancing the improbable with the logical Carey has a precise, descriptive, witty and ordered style. Families feature throughout this good if uneven collection and are usually portrayed as tribes of misfits held together by fear. In "Do You Love Me?" a son powerfully replays memories of the emotional humiliations inflicted by a bullying father. Another good story, "Joe", seems to predate The Tax Inspector, while the finest one, "American Dreams" movingly laments the passing of happiness.
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