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The Chemistry of Tears
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 love—all 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 Catherine’s
secret—her boss—arranges for her to be given a special
project away from prying eyes in the museum’s 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 creature’s 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 Henry’s 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 body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.
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