Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, 379 pages.
Apparently Peter Carey can write, and write well, about anything and everything. I first read his "The True History of the Kelly Gang" about the infamous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, several years ago and have since enjoyed pretty much everything he has written. His last book before this one, "His Illegal Self" was a wonderfully disjointed tale about a woman and the child of two 1960's radicals on the run together, with part of the story told from the lost, bewildered child's point of view. This tale, Parrot and Olivier, set largely in 1830's New York, felt like that to me (disjointed and bewildering, that is)for a long time, until I realized that the downloadable audio book I was listening to had the book out of order and it had started in the middle of the story. Even jumbled, though, it was a tale worth reading and listening to. With the fictional character Olivier de Garmont standing in for the real Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Larrit, aka Parrot, aka Perroquet, his sometime servant, traveling, each for his own reasons, from Paris to New York, we get to see the worlds that both men have lost and watch as they try to reclaim their pasts and their struggles to construct some kind of future. Both are extraordinary characters, misreading situations and each other as they make their way in the New World. One of my favorites of 2010.