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THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS
By: Peter Carey
Knopf
May 2012
On Sale: May 15, 2012
240 pages
ISBN: 0307592715
EAN: 9780307592712
Kindle: B0067TGT3A
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
An automaton, a man and a woman who can never meet, two stories of loveβall are brought to incandescent life in this hauntingly moving novel from one of the finest writers of our time. London 2010: Catherine Gehrig, conservator at the Swinburne museum, learns of the sudden death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man, she must struggle to keep the depth of her anguish to herself. The one other person who knows Catherineβs secretβher bossβarranges for her to be given a special project away from prying eyes in the museumβs Annexe. Usually controlled and rational, but now mad with grief, Catherine reluctantly unpacks an extraordinary, eerie automaton that she has been charged with bringing back to life. As she begins to piece together the clockwork puzzle, she also uncovers a series of notebooks written by the mechanical creatureβs original owner: a nineteenth-century Englishman, Henry Brandling, who traveled to Germany to commission it as a magical amusement for his consumptive son. But it is Catherine, nearly two hundred years later, who will find comfort and wonder in Henryβs story. And it is the automaton, in its beautiful, uncanny imitation of life, that will link two strangers confronted with the mysteries of creation, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention, and the bodyβs astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - May 13, 2012
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