Review of Fabulating Beauty: Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey, edited by Andreas Gaile

Abstract

In difficult publishing times such as ours, when it becomes something of a gamble to try and sell an edited collection of essays on a single author, Andreas Gaile's Fabulating Beauty. Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey is an invaluable contribution to the field. And we have to thank European publisher Rodopi for making it possible to promote Ozlit beyond its national borders. This collection, the sixth monograph on the expatriate Bacchus Marsh novelist, features a cluster of international scholars (nine Australian scholars out of twenty-one contributors), which evens up the number of Carey studies written or edited by Australian and by international critics. Andreas Gaile, who has written a doctoral dissertation and a few articles on Carey's fiction, is undeniably well qualified for the task. As an editor, I sympathise with the time-consuming process he went through, not only to collect, but to peruse, discuss, edit, accept or reject contributors' proposals. From that perspective, I can only acknowledge Gaile's Herculean task of putting together 474 pages of criticism in such a magnificent hardback edition.