Parrot and Olivier in America

379 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-307-59262-0

(5 reviews)

From the two-time Booker Prize--winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America.Olivier--an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville--is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States--ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution--Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier.As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, 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. And with their story, Peter Carey …

From the two-time Booker Prize--winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America.Olivier--an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville--is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States--ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution--Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier.As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, 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. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.From the Hardcover edition.

7 editions

Applemcg reviewed Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Review of 'Parrot and Olivier in America' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

i liked parrot. irene intervened just about the time i was ready to digest this book in behalf of our bookclub. some books are the victim of history. i had to give it up when our heros had reached manhattan's shores, and were beginning their experience of life in the new world. maybe if I'd picked it up there at the outset, the urge to complete it would have been stronger. returnreturni won't challenge the assertion of carey's articulate pen, and i do recall quite a few chuckles, especially at parrot's expense. but, i can only stand in front of the mona lisa for so long. many years ago, while an undergraduate, a mentor, bob johnson, in mpls (where else) observed, "you don't have to spend five minutes in new york to know you don't want to live there. so it is with a book". parrot and olivier in american …

i liked parrot. irene intervened just about the time i was ready to digest this book in behalf of our bookclub. some books are the victim of history. i had to give it up when our heros had reached manhattan's shores, and were beginning their experience of life in the new world. maybe if I'd picked it up there at the outset, the urge to complete it would have been stronger. returnreturni won't challenge the assertion of carey's articulate pen, and i do recall quite a few chuckles, especially at parrot's expense. but, i can only stand in front of the mona lisa for so long. many years ago, while an undergraduate, a mentor, bob johnson, in mpls (where else) observed, "you don't have to spend five minutes in new york to know you don't want to live there. so it is with a book". parrot and olivier in american kept postponing that five minutes, until the clock ran out.