“Those of us who row in the galleys of fiction reviewing fall on an author of such talent as on a refreshing and intoxicating drink.”
—The Times (London)
“In a single bound it has brought contemporary Australian fiction out of its last, stubborn crannies of provincialism into a new universality and sophistication.”
—Sydney Morning Herald
“A masterful amalgam of black humor, satire, perceptive observation and empathy…. Carey is a writer of power and imagination.”
—Washington Post Book World
“A remarkable first novel. In both the breadth of his vision of human life, in all its misery and happiness, and in the profundity of his insight into moral dilemmas, Mr. Carey makes the work of most of our ‘promising’ young and not so young novelists seem tinselly and trivial. Not since Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story has a novel so much convinced me of the emergence of a potentially major talent.”
—Spectator
“A remarkable tour de force …Carey can write. He is funny, humane and profound.”
—The Literary Review (London)
“He is that answer to a reviewer’s prayer: The Real Thing… You can hardly fail to be moved by Peter Carey’s Orphean talent as storyteller and seer.”
—The Evening Standard (London)
“A quite strikingly original novel. If you wanted a one-line description you could say that it glitters, in a specially dark kind of way.”
—Elizabeth Riddell, The Bulletin (Australia)
“Arresting …. An icy, stealthily paced comedy. We’re in the hands of an accomplished satirist [who is] very, very good.”
—Newsweek
“Beautiful, Bliss is beautiful. It’s a real tribute to the author that you are scarcely aware of him, so dazzled are you by the enchanted landscapes that he puts together.”
—Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Very funny … Carey alternates his broad strokes with beautifully detailed ones. Every tree and stone in his world, every brick and blade of grass, has a sound, a smell, a feel, a life. Bliss is a very fine novel indeed.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“An eerie, compelling first novel; its characters are no less exotic and disconcerting than the colorful, lush wild life that creeps up to the edges of their suburbs.”
—New Yorker
“Carey handles the impressive and unsettling situation here with deft, cool talent, especially in a raft of very funny (rageful) family scenes…Strong work from a big, growing talent.”
—Kirkus
‘Peter Carey’s first novel is even better than we might have expected, a sustained and sardonic fable on the folly of being wise.’
—New Statesman
‘Bliss fascinates and amuses, amazes and appalls, is scintillating and black, savage and sarcastic.’
—Canberra Times
‘Bliss is outrageous perfection. Madcap, adventurous, engaging, compelling, shocking, moving, funny, sad and inventive.’
—San Francisco Bay Reporter
‘Wholly original and unusual, this novel is a far-out comedy that often approaches absurd brilliance. Harry Joy is a successful middle-aged advertising executive who is unaware that his wife cheats, his son runs dope and his daughter is a Communist. But when he has a heart attack. He believes that he has died and gone to Hell where actors portray family and friends.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘Let me begin by saying that I suspect this is one of the best novels to be published in Australia for some time. Bliss is a triumph, for Carey and for Australian literature.’
—Image