Bliss (Vintage International) (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
This quintessential Australian black comedy is a true diamond in the rough. It’s one of Carey’s earliest novels, and a great introduction to a hidden literary talent.
Harry Joy is living what he thinks is a great life, until he suddenly drops dead. For 9 minutes, he stays dead, and suddenly comes back to life— but it’s not the life he was living before. His perfect wife and kids are unfaithful, selling drugs, and advocating communism. Is this hell, or is he seeing his true reality for the first time?
While outrageously funny at times, the novel simultaneously touches on profundities of life, death, love, second chances, and redemption.
— From Alden's Picks
For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.
Part The Wizard of Oz, part Dante’s Inferno, and part Australian Book of the Dead, Bliss is a triumph of uninhabited storytelling from a writer of extravagant gifts.
Part The Wizard of Oz, part Dante’s Inferno, and part Australian Book of the Dead, Bliss is a triumph of uninhabited storytelling from a writer of extravagant gifts.
PETER CAREY is the author of thirteen previous novels. In addition to the Booker Prize, his honors include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for more than twenty-five years.