More than 25 years ago, Peter Carey co-wrote one of the most audacious road movies ever made, Wim Wenders’s Until the End of the World, which circles the globe before concluding with a long interlude in the Australian outback. While the film was in the mode of speculative science fiction and Carey’s captivating A Long Way from Home is a fiercely realist story set in the 1950s, this new book nonetheless shares both that earlier work’s fascination with outsiders whose lives spin off in unpredictable directions, and as a profound reverence for Australia’s interior and its people.
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Outside Melbourne, in the small town of Bacchus Marsh, Willie Bachhuber — a disgraced former schoolteacher and radio quiz-show regular who develops a passion for mapmaking — and his neighbour Irene Bobs — diminutive mother of two and wife of Titch Bobs, one of the best car salesmen in the country — find their lives entangled when Titch decides to enter the Redex Reliability Trial.
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