Bingo square – Travel
I’ve read one of Peter Carey’s books (Oscar and Lucinda) awhile back (long enough ago it isn’t on my Goodreads list) but what I remembered about reading it was that the first two-thirds were What am I even reading, and then it clicked in and I devoured the rest. So, readers, let us say I was prepared, and buckled in for the long ride.
All right, those of you about my age certainly remember Patty Hearst. Now let’s just say she hooked up with someone along the lines of, say, Tom Hayden. (Yeah, I know that was Jane Fonda, but this is a different flavor of entitled rich white girl.) And let’s say that they had a son, but Patty was tragically killed in an accident, and Dad pulled a scarper, so the kid ended up with superrich hateful Grandma. And then the nanny, a Greek immigrant (who has just been accepted by Vassar as a brand-new professor!) ends up heisting the kid to try to return him to the fugitive dad, but all goes awry. Everybody with me?
So nanny and kid end up, chasing the elusive dad, in a cerca-70’s hippie colony in Queensland, Australia, along with a boodle of cash. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Now since the author is Australian, he is in home territory. The set-up is, quite frankly, preposterous, but once it got going, this was a milieu of which I’ve never read before. And ending for the win!