Amnesia by Peter Carey

Peter Carey is one of the few writers you could expect to pull off a sprawling tale about hackers, global capitalism and Australian politics. He’s got that pedigree, so rare, of producing meaningful and readable books. Amnesia is certainly readable, but while it strives for meaning at every turn it often feels drab.

Gaby Baillieux, daughter to a politician and an actor, infiltrates the Australian prison system’s computers such that asylum seekers are let loose. American penal facilities, sharing the same private backers and software, are similarly affected. Embattled lefty journalist Felix Moore is commissioned, by Gaby’s mother and dodgy property man (and mate) Woody Townes, to pen a redemptive book on the accused.

At about the halfway point, Moore quotes Tolstoy: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ The problem is, the family of which Felix writes – Gaby, mother Celine and father Sando Quinn – are unhappy and alike. That is, they’re familiar. There are glimmers of that rugged pizzazz Carey trades in, but so often this feels procedural. There’s plenty going on, and the personal and political strands are neatly woven together, but what might have been a spicy cyberpunk yarn is instead a slightly pedestrian tale of middle class family strife. [Angus Sutherland]