A Long Way from Home

By: Peter Carey

Narrated by: Colin McPhillamy, Craig Baldwin, Saskia Maarleveld

The two-time Booker Prize-winning author now gives us a wildly exuberant, wily new novel that circumnavigates 1954 Australia, revealing as much about the country/continent as it does about three audacious individuals who take part in the infamous 10,000 mile race the Redex Trial.

Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher who calls the turns and creeks crossings on a map that will remove them, without warning, from the white Australia they all know so well.

This is a thrilling high-speed story that starts in one way and then takes you someplace else. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always compelling, even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.

Set in the 1950s, this a world every American will recognize: black, white, who we are, how we got here, and what we did to each other along the way. A Long Way from Home is Peter Carey's late-style masterpiece.

©2018 Peter Carey (P)2018 Recorded Books

Over hyped

It seems that reviewers of this book WANT to like it more than its true worth. Peter Carey, noted Booker Prize author, returns to Australia and explores adventure (Redex race) and shameful past (treatment of aboriginals). The teaser sounds good! But honestly, I listened with a sense of "can we please get this book over with," and/or "there has got to be a big climax to make it all worthwhile," and that did not happen for me. Can't tell you how many times I looked at my iPhone and said "ugh, that much more to go??" I think Carey tried to create a climax with the sub plot that really is the raison d'être of the book and it occupies the latter 1/3 of the narrative, but I was pretty bored and pretty confused by some of the characters and how they got into this novel and the interactions with the protagonist just did not feel authentic.No spoiler alerts to be given away, but the supposed climax of the novel is just boring and not "organic" to what has occurred in the rest of the book. I feel like a good editor/publisher could have read this and sent Carey away for a re-write that would have made a much better novel, but they undoubtedly don't do that with authors of his stature...

Brilliant, moving, disturbing

Among the greatest books by one of our greatest novelists, performed by the perfect cast. Colin McPhillamy could not be better.

A Slow Start

First part of the book was hard for me to follow. Unsure of subject matter or for intent of the book. The middle part was much better and quite enjoyable. The ending was fractured and a bit vague. The prime characters were jumbled and left with many detail unanswered. What i gained from the story is that the Australian Government, and many of the Australian characters, are rotten people. Overall this is a story of the terrible tragedies inflicted on the indigenous people of Australia as cruelly governed by the English Settlers. Not a happy book. Probably will not read again.

Bait and switch

What starts as a charming domestic drama centered on a road race around Australia's circumference suddenly shifts to an essentially unrelated and unoriginal horror story of guess what - white racsim.