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    The Chemistry of Tears
    The Chemistry of Tears
    The Chemistry of Tears
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Chemistry of Tears

    Written by Peter Carey

    Narrated by Susan Lyons and Jefferson Mays

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Critics have used every possible superlative to praise the works of two-time Man Booker Prize winner Peter Carey. In The Chemistry of Tears, Carey continues to astound with a story of love, death and human invention. Museum curator Catherine's affair comes to an abrupt end with her married lover's untimely death. Denied outward grief by the nature of their relationship, Catherine retreats into isolation. Delving into notebooks more than a century old, she feels a growing connection to Henry Brandling, who in 1854 gave life to a mechanical creature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 28, 2012
    ISBN9781464038402
    The Chemistry of Tears

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    Reviews for The Chemistry of Tears

    3.5/5

    8 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Reason for Reading: Peter Carey's True History of the Kelley Gang is one of my all time favourite books and I've always meant to read another by the author. With this latest book coming out, the time period and the automata piqued my interest enough to decide to give him another go at this time.I'm not even going to try and analyze just what the hidden, under the surface meanings are in this story, there are plenty but it gives me a headache looking at this book that way. I just want to read it and enjoy a good story. Read it I did but I only found a mediocre story. We start off on the first page meeting the main character, an adulteress, with no redeeming qualities. Her married lover has just died and she is totally wrapped up in herself. She has no cares for his children, whom he loved dearly and we learn that she often was jealous of them. She is quite younger than this man and her life seems to have existed for their relationship together, and her job as an horologist at a museum secondly. That's all, no friends, no family. Catherine, or Cat, as she is commonly called is given a project to restore to help her with her grief by the only person at the museum who knew about her affair.The text alternates between Catherine in the present dealing with her grief, possessiveness and selfishness as she becomes somewhat obsessive over the automata that she and a young assistant, whom she dislikes and distrusts, are working on. Cat is also reading through the ledgers/journals that came packed with the assemblage which gives us the other view. Henry Blanding tells his story set in the 1850s of how he came to a strange little German town and had an even stranger man build his clockwork duck for him. His journal is written to his young son whom he promised this prized possession in hopes that it would make him well, as he is a sickly boy, most likely consumptive. Henry also is not a rather likable fellow. His wife has refused relations with him, denied to care for their son, since their first child, a daughter died the same way. She is loveless to them and Henry is pathetic in his attempts to be all and do all for this cold woman who brings in an artistic crowd to their house to have her portraits painted. Henry is eventually persuaded to leave the house, his search to make the automata his pretence for leaving. While unlike Catherine, Henry does slowly change throughout the book, for the most part he is a weak man, easily taken advantage of, of superior mind of course being an Englishman, and emotionally volatile.There is more to say, but I shan't go on. The basic plot of the two stories was entertaining to read, the writing naturally superb, and I had no problem getting though the book quickly; I'm sure its short length helped matters though. But I had no connection to any of the characters, not liking them, nor caring what happened to them in the end. Not everyone is sane in this story and it's up to the reader to decide who is or isn't sane. Perhaps they are all off their rockers. The ending does little to satisfy this reader.
    • 4/5
      Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears is the moving story of a young curator grappling with a deep personal loss. Her boss gives her the task of reconstructing a 19th-century automaton, and Catherine is drawn deeply into the story of the machine's creation through the manuscript journals of its patron. Carey's a fine storyteller, and he's managed to craft a tale just as intricate as mechanical creature within.
    • 3/5
      Here's something I don't often say about a novel: I don't get it. There are two stories here, one of recently-bereaved Catherine, who is a horologist at the Swinburne and has been asked to work on an automaton, and one of Henry, the 19th century gentleman who commissioned the automaton for his sick child. In her grief, Catherine becomes obsessed with Henry and his story, and goes to great lengths to read his notebooks. Why should Catherine latch on to Henry so strongly? What, exactly, was so interesting about Henry's story? Why should we care about either of these characters? I would love to know. I found Henry's sections almost unreadably muddled and dull. Catherine's sections were mostly clear, but even there characters would have revelations or make connections that remained utterly murky to me. And I never could warm to Catherine, even enough to be interested what happened to her, what with her nastiness, her instincts to drown her grief in alcohol and drugs, and her devotion to a love and a man who are never realized on the page. It's entirely possible I'm missing something here, but truly, this effort from a two-time Booker-winner left me confused, irritated, and utterly flummoxed.
    • 4/5
      I agree with other reviewers that the cover is stupid and seriously misrepresents this book. I want to give it four and a half stars. I had no issues with liking the protagonists at all, they are uncomfortable cranky grief-stricken people and I felt strong sympathy and anxiety for both of them. The characters and ideas are developed with a lot of organic mystery and complications that feel well worth re-reading, I think this book is good enough to not be entirely graspable the first time through. I was riveted when the automaton appeared early on, wasn't sure it would pay off but when it is built and displayed the final passage describing it in action could not be more thrilling or satisfactory. Half a point off for some vague and impenetrable spots, which may or may not improve for me if I read it again.
    • 5/5
      Have just finished reading, The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey. Very Peter Carey-ish! Think about the title when as you read it. The title reflects the novel on a myriad of levelsWent to hear Carey talk as part of the Luminato festival in TorontoHe was fantastic. Unfortunately eBooks are hard to write on so I had to have other titles signed.... further thoughts on Chemistry of Tears. I had been hesitantly wondering about its relationship (somewhat tenuously) to the steampunk genre. Really would have liked to ask Peter Carey about that--but you know how it is... In the article, Of silver swans and steampunk, in Express Night (05/30/2012) by Stephen M. Deusneri, Carey is quoted as saying that he,“thinks his new novel, “The Chemistry of Tears,” might fall under the subgenre of “steampunk.”“The notion, as I (Carey) understand it, is old technology in the modern world,” Carey says. His book has plenty of “old technology” — namely, 19th-century automata, incredibly intricate robots whose clockwork innards allowed them to (stiffly) simulate natural movement”So, I’m feeling vindicated about that thought.The book showcase Carey at his pithy best, relationally and historically and leaves us with the disquieting reflection of the destruction of mankind by invention of the combustion engine.
    • 4/5
      Already twice a winner of the prestigious Booker Prize, Peter Carey now offers his readers The Chemistry of Tears, a complexly constructed study of grief and self-identity set in contemporary London. Despite its modern-day setting (2010), however, the novel can also legitimately be called historical fiction as much of its story is lifted directly from the pages of a nineteenth century Englishman’s personal diary.Catherine Gehrig is a conservator at the Swinburne Museum whose thirteen-year affair with a married colleague is still a mostly well-kept secret. As far as she knows, no one at the museum suspects that she and Matthew Tindall, one of the museum’s head curators, have a relationship of that sort. Their secret is so successfully kept, in fact, that when Matthew dies suddenly, Catherine is among the last of the museum employees to get the news. Now, her whole world in turmoil, she must pretend that she has not been emotionally crippled by her devastating grief.Fortunately for Catherine, her boss - the one man who now seems to have been aware of the affair – places her on immediate sick leave before transferring her to a more isolated museum annex to work on the unusual project he has chosen for her. There Catherine finds eight boxes filled with the diagrams and mechanical parts needed to restore and assemble what appears to be a160-year-old duck automation. It is when she discovers a series of notebooks relating to the origin of the automation that Catherine becomes obsessed with her new assignment.Carey will, from this point, alternate accounts of Catherine’s life with pages taken from the notebooks of Henry Brandling, the Englishman who originally commissioned the amazing automation she is working to reconstruct. Brandling, a man completely devoted to his sickly young son, hopes that the boy will be so taken with the mechanical duck that he will somehow find the will to conquer the disease that is slowly killing him. Brandling’s willingness to do whatever it takes to keep his son alive brings him to a tiny German village where he falls into the hands of a strange clockmaker who will drive him closer and closer to despair.The Chemistry of Tears tackles complex human emotions, emotions that probably have to be personally experienced for one to comprehend their full impact on the human psyche. Catherine’s entire identity, the person she believed herself to be, was defined by her affair with Matthew Tindall. When Matthew died, the old Catherine Gehrig died with him, and now she is working just as hard to reconstruct a self-identity for herself as she is on rebuilding the antique mechanical duck. Whether or not she can succeed with either project is the question.The Chemistry of Tears is a moving novel, one that will especially speak to those readers who have suffered a level of grief similar to Catherine’s. While it is not a long novel, it does suffer a bit from an overabundance of mysterious side plots pertaining to the tribulations suffered by the automation’s original owner. Readers, however, should not be overly discouraged by this because The Chemistry of Tears is well worth the effort required – and each of the side plots contributes to the book’s atmosphere or depth of the Henry Brandling character.
    • 3/5
      The Chemistry of Tears is bewitching and beguiling. It teases and tempts but ultimately left me unsatisfied. There are two story threads, interwoven; in the first Catherine, a conservator of clocks, is grief stricken from the death of her longtime secret lover - an affair which turns out to be nowhere near as secret as she imagines. To help her recovery, she is given the task of rebuilding an automaton - a mechanical silver swan commissioned and built in the 19th century. In doing this she is helped, and hindered, by her assistant Amanda who seems to be struggling with her own demons, to know rather too much about Catherine, and to have her own agenda for the swan. At the same time Catherine becomes obsessed with the journals of Henry Brandling, the original commissioner of the swan, and these journals make up the second story arcBrandling, the wealthy scion of an eccentric family, travels to Germany looking for a clockmaker who can make a copy of Vaucanson's Digesting Duck for the amusement of his son, stricken with TB. On arriving in Germany he is lead a merry dance by an eccentric group of characters lead by the larger than life clockmaker Herr Sumper, who takes his commission but ultimately refuses to make a copy of the duck, preferring instead to construct the swan. Brandling's frustrations and trials in getting his duck made and worries over his son are mirrored in Catherine's attempts to reconstruct the swan and deal with her own grief.For me, only Catherine's narrative works - her fears and insecurities and slow realisation of her manipulation by the Museum Director, Eric Croft, are convincing and engrossing. But the Brandling narrative frustrated me. It seemed to be structured as a fairy tale, with acts of small magic, lots of getting lost in the forest, and Brandling the innocent quester who cannot quite understand what he sees. But it was all a little mystical for my tastes, and I found my attention wandering whenever Sumper was on his soapbox browbeating Brandling with his fantastical theories.I was also unconvinced by the air of millenial doom, with all the 2010 characters seemingly obsessed by the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill and the suggestion that the machines and mechanisms that hold such excitement for Sumper are now beyond out control and the cause of our destructionBut as always with Carey the writing is funny, engaging and compelling. But I left the book with questions unanswered and the feeling that I had been observing through a keyhole, with things I wanted to know about falling outside my line of sight
    • 1/5
      I know everyone is raving about this book but I so did not like it. I did not understand what the main characters were working on.... maybe I am just stupid but it did not make sense to me. I seldom read the end of the book just to finish a book but I did with this book. I still missed the main theme and point of the book. I did not like the people in the book and maybe it was a fantasy rather than a story based in real time.