Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears

Peter Carey's new novel, The Chemistry of Tears, is a delight. The story is filled with wonderful characters, as always. He has structured the book in a double helix twisting around a 19th century automaton. The first strand is the story of a grieving horologist, Catherine, who is a conservator at a London museum. She is given the task of restoring this extraordinary machine by her boss, who is ostensibly looking out for her well being after the death of her lover. As the story unfolds she learns how much he is directing the players, like the levers in an automaton. The second strand is the story of a 19th century father of a very ill child, who travels afar to commission the construction of this device, in hopes it will cheer his son to health. In both strands, the two protagonists encounter wildly eccentric characters who they must deal with to achieve their goals. Catherine is assigned a crazed, umm, enthusiastic, young assistant, who has ties to her boss & her former lover. Henry commissions a seemingly hallucinogenic clock maker, who launches them on a wild journey. First person chapters alternate between Catherine and the father, Henry. Catherine, while grieving, keeps us smiling with her irreverence. Henry, speaks to Catherine through a set of notebooks that he wrote on his journey, which she finds packed among the pieces of the automaton. In some chapters, the two voices are mixed together. Their goals and trials are linked over the distance of 150 years. Carey fills both stories with detail about complex automata, their construction and conservation, of course, all tied to the human beings involved. It's a lark of a fast read.