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y separately published work icon My Life as a Fake single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2003... 2003 My Life as a Fake
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Sarah Wode-Douglas is an aristocratic woman who has made her living as the editor of the poetry magazine "First Proof", until she impulsively follows a friend to Kuala Lumpur. She meets Christopher Chubb, an enigmatic wreck of a man whose terrible secrets Sarah is compelled to discover and pursue. (Source: Trove)

Exhibitions

18388172
18387981

Notes

  • Dedication: For our sons, Sam and Charley
  • Epigraph: I beheld the wretch - the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed: and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818
  • Listed in The New York Times Book Review's list of Notable Books for 2003.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Milsons Point, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Random House Australia , 2003 .
      image of person or book cover 5213475168109406045.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 280p.
      ISBN: 1740512464
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Knopf ,
      2003 .
      image of person or book cover 3868594530620565245.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 1st October 2003
      ISBN: 0375414983
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Faber ,
      2003 .
      image of person or book cover 6277447970656457310.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 288p.p.
      Reprinted: 2010
      ISBN: 9780571216208, 057121620X
    • Milsons Point, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Vintage Australia , 2004 .
      image of person or book cover 3176325472427038297.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 280p.
      ISBN: 1740513088 (pbk.)
    • Toronto, Ontario,
      c
      Canada,
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage Canada ,
      2005 .
      image of person or book cover 3619774866324133226.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 288p.p.
      ISBN: 9780679312826, 067931282X
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      2005 .
      image of person or book cover 7618363682730944527.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 265p.p.
      ISBN: 9781400030880, 1400030889
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2015 .
      image of person or book cover 5060621418432120923.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 1vp.
      Note/s:
      ISBN: 9781760141394
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 6340103957602983546.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 308p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 3rd March 2020
      ISBN: 9781760896553
Alternative title: Mein Leben als Falschung
Language: German
    • Frankfurt am Main,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      S. Fischer Verlag ,
      2004 .
      image of person or book cover 4152411636253927338.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 285p.
      ISBN: 3100102266
    • Frankfurt am Main,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      S. Fischer Verlag ,
      2006 .
      image of person or book cover 3763952655741757000.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 285p.
      ISBN: 9783596162468, 3596162467

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Local Publisher, Global Agent Keyvan Allahyari , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Peter Carey : The Making of a Global Novelist 2023; (p. 133-189)

'This chapter focuses on three late-career Carey novels, namely My Life as a FakeParrot and Olivier in America, and Amnesia, on the thread to complete my analysis of Carey’s ongoing engagement in and around his fiction with the status of the Australian author in the transnational literary marketplace. Carey’s visibility in this period is marked by his shifting position in relation to the globalising publishing industry, the rise of digital publishing, and the mutations of academic and political recognition into convertible cultural capital in the literary field. These changes in practice and modes of recognition are analogous with the aggressive move towards monopoly capitalism by corporate systems in liberal democracies, including Australia.' (Publication abstract)

From Context to Text : Peter Carey’s Monstrous Creation in My Life as a Fake Jean-François Vernay , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 11 no. 2 2020;

'Analysing one of Peter Carey’s hallmarks—fact vs fake or fiction, truth vs untruth —, this article explores the wide-ranging implications and ramifications of the Ern Malley affair in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake, a story published in 2003, but which still resonates in 2020 given the current global attention for “fake news” and “fake truths” often used in Donald Trump’s toxic propaganda. This timely recovery of a debate in Australian literature that started in the 1990s is instrumental in making a case for rigorous textual analysis while tying it up with questions of legitimacy which have always haunted colonial and postcolonising Australia. By probing the text/context issue and linking it to the critique of New Criticism’s isolation of the text from contemporary circumstances as insufficient to capture textual meaning fully or appropriately, Vernay’s analysis attempts at reconciling the word and the world.'

Source: Abstract.

High Wire Act : Peter Carey’s 'My Life as a Fake' Anthony J. Hassall , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 6 no. 1 2015;

This essay examines how Carey displays the multiple fakeries of fiction in My Life as a Fake. It notes the multiple inter-textual references to the Ern Malley hoax and the gothic horror of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It examines the three unreliable narrating voices, the uneven characterisation of Christopher Chubb, and the magic realism seeking to animate Bob McCorkle and his present/absent book My Life as a Fake. It argues that the dazzling display of meta-fictional complexity, much celebrated by reviewers, contributes to the book's failure to create engaging characters and a credible narrative. [From the journal's webpage]

On the Genealogy of Democracy : Reading Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America Peter Mathews , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 27 no. 2 2012; (p. 68-80)
Inside out in Australia Peter Ellingsen , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 71 no. 1 2012; (p. 56-62)
'The notion of an inner life - just like the idea of an inland - has long been equated with emptiness in Australia. Terms such as 'dead heart' to denote the red centre and 'outback' to describe regions outside coastal cities suggest that, in Australia, the inner is on the outer. Even in the metropolis there is, as D.H. Lawrence noted when he visited Sydney, a terrifying vacancy. Australians, he wrote in his novel Kangaroo, were 'awfully nice but they have got nothing inside them'. For Patrick White, this was the Great Australian Emptiness, an environment in which 'the mind is the least of possessions, in which the rich man is the important man, in which the schoolmaster and the journalist rule what intellectual roost there is ...' (Author's abstract)
At its Heart, No Throb in Carey's Latest Rosemary Sorensen , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 26 July 2003; (p. 4)

— Review of My Life as a Fake Peter Carey , 2003 single work novel
The Curse of Ern Malley Luke Slattery , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 26-27 July 2003; (p. 6-7, 12)

— Review of My Life as a Fake Peter Carey , 2003 single work novel
Truth to Tell Phil Brown , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Brisbane News , 30 July - 5 August no. 454 2003; (p. 24)

— Review of My Life as a Fake Peter Carey , 2003 single work novel
Life-Giving Lies Andreas Gaile , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 253 2003; (p. 10-11)

— Review of My Life as a Fake Peter Carey , 2003 single work novel
Malleable Fantasy Katharine England , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 9 August 2003; (p. 9)

— Review of My Life as a Fake Peter Carey , 2003 single work novel
True History to Grand Hoax Ben Naparstek , 2003 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 26 July 2003; (p. [1a]-2a)
For My Next Trick... Susan Wyndham , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 26-27 July 2003; (p. 4-5)
What's Truth Got to Do with It? Jason Steger , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Age , 26 July 2003; (p. 3)
Carey on Writing Carey's Monster Ben Naparstek , 2003 single work criticism column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 26 July 2003; (p. 4) The West Australian , 6 September 2003; (p. 15)
Peter Carey has found inspiration for his new work, My Life as a Fake,in an Australian literary hoax from the 1940s.
Flesh for FrankenstErn 2003 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9-10 August 2003; (p. 10-11)
Summarises the main thrust of newspaper reviews published at the time of My Life as a Fake's publication in August 2003.
Last amended 19 Jul 2023 15:20:56
Settings:
  • Melbourne, Victoria,
  • Kuala Lumpur,
    c
    Malaysia,
    c
    Southeast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
  • London,
    c
    England,
    c
    c
    United Kingdom (UK),
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • Townsville, Townsville area, Marlborough - Mackay - Townsville area, Queensland,
  • 1940s
  • 1970s
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