My Life as a Fake

280 pages. Dj chippedMY LIFE AS A FAKE is a fantastical gothic tale, in part inspired by Mary Shel ley's Frankenstein, about a hoax poet who mysteriously materialises and then pur sues, taunts, haunts and otherwise destroys his maker. Two-time Booker prize win ning author Peter Carey uses the Ern Malley hoax as a springboard, but the leap he takes is into the realms of richly imagined fiction. Sara, an English poetry editor on holiday in Kuala Lumpur, stumbles upon an Australian, Christopher Chub b, reading Rilke in a bicycle shop. The man shows her a scrap of poetry the like of which she's never seen. She becomes determined to get her hands on the poetr y, to publish in (and revive) her ailing poetry journal. Chubb insists that Sara hear his story first. His tale is told over many sittings, and is the central s tory of MY LIFE AS A FAKE. As a conservative young poet in Melbourne in the 1950 s, Chubb decided to teach the country a lesson about pretension and authenticity . Choosing as his target the most avant-garde of the literary magazines, he subm itted for publication the entire oeuvre of one Bob McCorkle, a working-class poe t of raw power and sexual frankness, conveniently dead at twenty-four and entire ly the product of Chubb's imagination. Not only did the magazine fall for the ho ax, but its editor was prosecuted for publishing obscenity. At the trial someone uncannily resembling the man in the faked photograph of the invented McCorkle l eapt to his feet. At that moment the horrified Chubb was confronted by the malev olent being he had himself manufactured. Peter Carey wickedly and ruefully explo res how the phantom poet taunts, haunts and otherwise destroys his maker, pursui ng Chubb from Melbourne to the seedy, sweaty, tropical chaos of Kuala Lumpur. An.…