Peter Carey His Illegal Self

His Illegal Self - Peter Carey - Book Review - New York Times

On the day the book begins, Che’s sheltered life of doormen, museum visits, country house retreats and spinsterly games of ludo comes to an end. The elevator to his grandmother’s apartment opens upon a defiant young hippie, come to collect him. Beholding her, Che is “deaf, in love,” dazzled. “He had thought of her so many nights and here she was, exactly the same, completely different — honey-colored skin and tangled hair in 15 shades. She had Hindu necklaces, little silver bells around her ankles, an angel sent by God.” When he asks her, “Can I call you Mom?” she responds, “You can call me Dial.”

Dial is short for “dialectic.” A self-styled “S.D.S. goddess,” Dial has just become an assistant professor in the English department at Vassar, but she’s still caught in the ideological web of the Movement, “although what the Movement was by 1972 depended on whom you were talking to.” As the boy looks at the unknown woman, “adoringly,” giving her “little glances, smiles,” she thinks “how glorious it was to be loved, she, Dial, who was not loved by anyone. She felt herself just absorb this little boy, his small damp hand dissolving in her own.” Where does Dial want to take Che, and is it for the Movement or for herself?