Escape is the operative word here, because neither the business nor the family is a healthy place to be, although both of them find it a lot more difficult to disentangle themselves than they would like. There are also a few other Catchprices waiting in the wings - Vishnabarnu has escaped to become a Hare Krishna, and Jack Catchprice has escaped into the big, bad world as a successful property developer. The novel opens with Benny being fired, family business or not. It's a family business, and three generations of the Catchprices work on the premises - Frieda, who co-founded the business despite her better judgement, her children Mort and Cathy, and her grandson Benny. The Tax Inspector is centred around Catchprice Motors, a car dealership a little way out of Sydney, who have found themselves increasingly isolated from potential customers. The reason I am reviewing The Tax Inspector some eleven years after its date of publication is that it falls squarely within the jurisdiction of this website, and in particular is a fascinating look at juxtaposing modern Australian lit with the Serial Killer Novel™. Also, Peter Carey has just won his second Booker - not to mention pretty much every other award that True History of the Kelly Gang was eligible for, and probably a few it wasn't - so I suspect I'm not going to be doing irreparable harm to reputations here. Singling it out for review is not really providing a representative sample of his work (though I guess the same rather useless criticism could be made if I reviewed my favourite of them, Oscar and Lucinda). Of the various Peter Carey novels I have read, The Tax Inspector probably did the least for me. They hung over him like a woven web, a net, like a map of the human brain drawn across the walls and ceilings of the world. A review by David Carroll, 2002.Īll around Vishnabarnu were the names of angels. The Year of the Fruitcake, by Gillian Polack The Time of the Ghosts, by Gillian Polack Fitzpatrickįragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead, by Robert Hood The Art of Effective Dreaming, by Gillian Polack The Tax Inspector, by Peter Carey: a reviewĪfter The Bloodwood Staff, by Laura E.

The tax inspector peter carey