Jul 29, 2015 01:20 AM
1864 Views
Bliss happens to be the first piece of wonderful writing by Carey, literally his first written and publish novel which is written in a very beautiful format.Clever and wity writing is one reason why Peter Carey is one of the most well known and awarded writters.After my bored and had nothing to do a summer afternoon I borrowed this book from my sister's shelf and started reading it with a nice hot cup of coffee.Lets talk about the book now shall we.
In this story, we meet Harry Joy, the owner of an ad agency and the head of his family; his wife Bettina, his son David, and his daughter Lucy. Harry was out mowing his lawn when he suddenly had a heart attack. When he is resucitated, he has been dead for nine minutes.
The funny thing is that when he wakes in the hospital, he is sure that he is in Hell. His life after that is changed forever. “Harry Joy was not particularly intelligent, not particularly successful, not particularly handsome and not particularly rich.” He knew he was in Hell. It was the only way he could rationalize his wife’s cheating on him with his partner, Joel; his daughter’s being a Communist; his son’s being primarily interested in money and wanting to ultimately becoming a drug dealer. Harry organizes the people around him into three categories: Captives, Actors, and Those in Charge.
His role, it appears, is to now do only good so that he can himself get out of Hell and, maybe, help others out of it too. This saga of Harry’s trip through Hell takes on a variety of trips with him as he tries to understand Hell and its workings. It seems to involve his falling in love with an attractive hooker, being a spearhead against those companies who produce products that cause cancer, and a stay in a mental institution. It is quite a ride, marred in part only by its rambling ending in a commune. Still, as a first novel, it is quite remarkable.
I would still recomend this book to everyone and lets not forget this is his debut in the line of writing, many more fine work is about to follow as history has seen it
