My Life as a Fake

Peter Carey's new novel is a true story about a literary renegade. In 1944, a literary magazine published poems attributed to Ern Malley. These later turned out to be hoaxes, but embarrassment was followed by scandal as the editor of the magazine was tried for obscenity.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

IAN MCMILLAN:
It's a wonderful book with many, many layers. The writing of place is fantastic. The writing of dialogue. Suddenly he will pop in an image that you weren't expecting, but all the time you are not quite sure what's happening. I had to make a little chart of who was who and who was writing who. He's writing as a woman part of the time but you don't quite believe it. All the way through there is this magnificent Frankenstein thing. The poet appears and he is seven feet tall, and he is frightening, and he refers to him as a "wretch" just like in Frankenstein. Then at the end it asks us questions about the writers we want to be. Do we want to be the careful writer or the wild writer? It asks us questions about programmes like this - how we choose the books to do and how as editors we choose the poets to publish.

LAWSON:
Lisa, as Ian suggests it is very complex. It seems to me - he has been writing a long time now, he's 60 this year, this is his eighth book - he's setting himself these literary challenges, can I do the voice of a woman who will then tell a story in the voice of a man. Lots of those layers and tricks. Does he get away with them?

LISA JARDINE:
This book is half good, half bad. The first 148 pages are terrific. The last half is Frankenstein meets Harry Potter, breathless rush and bits of Frankenstein. There is something troubling about that. Just the fact that the book has obviously at some level been written too fast. But the book is actually a deep dig at the insecurity of Australia. I am interested that Ian sees himself in it, but this is not about a hoax perpetrated in London. That would have had its own interest. It's perpetrated in Australia by Australians who desperately want in the literary coteries to have their own TS Eliot. This is their own attempt. I found there was really something troubling about this book, that Carey is now an exile, living in New York, talking about making lots of money in New York and writing a book about how small-town Australians are when it comes to culture.

MICHAEL PORTILLO:
There is a great cheat in this, which is that the girl who is pursuing the story comes across some literature, some poetry, which is devastatingly brilliant and which she is desperate to get her hands on, but its so devastatingly brilliant that we are never shown any of it at all, so there is a basic fraud at the centre of this fake. I rather agree that this thing didn't quite sustain itself. It is Frankenstein. It's a yarn. It's The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner, it's the Heart Of Darkness, it's all of those things, but I agree with Lisa that it kind of ran out of steam halfway through. I love the idea that a man creates a fake which comes to life. That's a lovely idea, but I don't think he knew how to continue that through to the end.

MCMILLAN:
It's a small town anywhere though, not just small town Australia. That's why I was attracted to it.

LAWSON:
But it is an attack on Australia though isn't it? He is saying Australia is a fake essentially?

JARDINE:
Yes. He is saying in so far as Australia aspires to produce Booker winners, it's a fake. That's a curious state that he has got himself into in New York.