Parrot and Olivier in AmericaFrom the two-time Booker Prize-winning author: an irrepressible, audacious, trenchantly funny new novel set in the 19th century and inspired in part by the life of Alexis de Tocqueville. With dazzling exuberance and all the richness of characterization, story, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer, Peter Carey explores the birth of democracy, the limits of friendship and whether people really can remake themselves in a New World. The two men at the heart of the novel couldn't be any more different: Olivier is the son of French aristocrats who (barely) survived the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerate English printer. But when young Parrot is separated from his father (after a stupendous conflagration at a house of forgery) he runs into the powerful embrace of a one-armed marquis who will be his conduit - like it or not - into a life as closely (mis)allied with Olivier's as if they were connected by blood. And when Olivier sets sail for America - ostensibly to make a study of the American penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from the latest guillotineurs - Parrot, unable to loosen the Marquis's grip, is there too: as spy, scribe, comptroller, protector, foe and foil. As the narrative unfurls, shifting between the perspectives of Olivier and Parrot, between their picaresque adventures apart and together, in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands - a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. |
Contents
Section 2 | |
Section 3 | |
Section 4 | |
Section 5 | |
Section 6 | |
Section 7 | |
Section 8 | |
Section 21 | |
Section 22 | |
Section 23 | |
Section 24 | |
Section 25 | |
Section 26 | |
Section 27 | |
Section 28 | |
Section 9 | |
Section 10 | |
Section 11 | |
Section 12 | |
Section 13 | |
Section 14 | |
Section 15 | |
Section 16 | |
Section 17 | |
Section 18 | |
Section 19 | |
Section 20 | |
Section 29 | |
Section 30 | |
Section 31 | |
Section 32 | |
Section 33 | |
Section 34 | |
Section 35 | |
Section 36 | |
Section 37 | |
Section 38 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Amelia American arrack asked assignat awful Bébé beneath better birds Blacqueville blood Broadway burin cabin called chamber pot Château de Barfleur cheeks Clarel Comtesse creature cried dark Dartmoor dear deck democracy Devon door Duponceau Eckerd Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun English engravings eyes face father faubourg Saint-Antoine fellow France French Frenchman glass gray hair hand head heard heart held imagine inside John Larrit king knew Les Lilas light lips living looked Lord Migraine lordship Maman Marquis de Tilbot Mathilde matter Miss Godefroy Molière Monsieur mother never night noble nose Odile Olivier de Garmont once painted Paris Parrot Peek Perroquet PETER CAREY pigeons Piggott poor printers prison returned river River Dart Saint-Dominique servant shoulder skin smell smiled stood Street Tartuffe tell thing thought told took turned understood walked Watkins Wethersfield wife wished York Zeus