The Tax Inspector - Hardcover

Carey, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679404341 ISBN 13: 9780679404347

Publisher: Knopf, 1992

Synopsis

From Granny Catchprice, who runs her family business--and her family--with senility, cunning, and a handbag full of explosives to sixteen-year-old Benny, who dreams of transforming a failing automobile franchise into an empire--and himself into an angel--the Catchprices may be the most spectacularly contentious family since Dostoevsky's Karamozovs.  But when a beautiful and very pregnant agent of the Australian Taxation Office enters their lives, the resulting collision becomes, in Carey's hands, masterpiece of coal-black humour and compassionate horror.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Carey was born in Australia and now lives in New York.  His internationally acclaimed novel, Oscar and Lucinda, won the Booker Prize in 1988.

From the Inside Flap

Catchprice, who runs her family business--and her family--with senility, cunning, and a handbag full of explosives to sixteen-year-old Benny, who dreams of transforming a failing automobile franchise into an empire--and himself into an angel--the Catchprices may be the most spectacularly contentious family since Dostoevsky's Karamozovs. But when a beautiful and very pregnant agent of the Australian Taxation Office enters their lives, the resulting collision becomes, in Carey's hands, masterpiece of coal-black humour and compassionate horror.

Reviews

The brilliant Australian novelist, whose award-winning Oscar and Lucinda was a macabre, rather Dickensian study of 19th-century religiosity, is working here in the very different territory of contemporary Sydney. Catchprice Motors is a scruffy auto dealership in a moldering suburb, run by a family of bizarre misfits with a history of child molestation. Granny Frieda goes around with explosives in her handbag, lumpy daughter Cathy longs to be a country singer, dour son Mort tries to fight the sexual lures of his own offspring, hyped-up Benny, who has bought a set of expensive audiotapes that promise to change his life; meanwhile Benny's brother Vish has fled to be a Hare Krishna. The family, perpetually at each other's throats, is brought to an even higher level of crisis by the arrival of a pretty--and pregnant--tax inspector, Maria Takis, to look into their dubious books. It is Carey's great gift to make out of this lurid material a book that is gripping, shocking and sometimes even moving--though the Grand Guignol climax does go over the edge. Yet the visceral understanding with which Carey probes these odd psyches, his remarkable eye for decay and corruption, and the humanity with which he presents Maria and her attempt at love linger in the mind despite the melodramatic windup.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From acclaimed Australian novelist Carey (Oscar and Lucinda, 1988; Illywhacker, 1985, etc.), a brilliantly realized, dark comedic story of a dysfunctional but ingenuous family. Most of the Catchprice family, including charismatic matriarch Frieda, live on the premises of their failing GM dealership in the Sydney suburbs. Frieda, who since girlhood has carried sticks of gelignite in her handbag, regrets that she never established the flower farm of her dreams, yet she acknowledges her responsibility for founding what became a succession of family enterprises. Daughter Cathy and son-in-law Howie have their hearts set on careers in country music, but Frieda won't let them or son Mort, who has his own dreams, leave. Only son Jack, a prosperous developer, and grandson Johnny, a Hare Krishna follower, have escaped. The Catchprices, though, are also a family of contradictions: ``big ones for kissing and cuddling, but you could not predict them. You could not rely on them for anything important.'' And then there are the family skeletons, never fully acknowledged until the literally explosive climax. When young Benny, Mort's abused and troubled son, decides to transform his life and become an ``Angel of Plagues,'' catharsis is inevitable. But the actual catalyst is provided by pregnant and unmarried Maria, the tax collector who comes to audit the books. The past is revealed; irrevocable decisions are made; and Benny, in love with Maria, creates his own bizarre scenario. Only the birth of Maria's baby amidst the resultant mayhem offers some hope. Powerful writing, and the Catchprices are all memorable, but the subtext of a wider corruption as insidious as that which maims this family seems more a reflection of fashionable angst than the reality of a country like Australia. Still, very good. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The Catchprices of suburban Sydney, Australia are a family in disarray. Their lives are centered around an auto dealership on the verge of collapse despite their fiddling with the books. No one but 16-year-old Benny really cares, and Benny is a psychotic living in a dingy cellar to avoid his father, a one-time child molester. Benny is determined to transform himself, via an expensive set of motivational tapes, a fancy new suit, and use of a depilatory, into the world's greatest car salesman and thus to save the business. His vision, however, is threatened by the arrival of tax inspector Maria Takis, so he sets out in his own warped way to induce her to drop the investigation. This is more than just Benny's story, however. It concerns an entire family coming apart at the seams, plagued by its own history and the frustration of unfulfilled dreams. Carey's greatest strength lies in his characterizations, in his ability to expose the complexity of human experience and see the victim within the victimizer. Disturbing yet alluring, this is highly recommended for collections of serious fiction.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679404341
• ISBN 13: 9780679404347
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 279