The typically unreliable narrator, Felix Moore, is one of Carey's memorable creations, an ageing socialist journo fallen on hard times, crashing across the pages in flaming personal and professional wreckage.
Roped into a plan to write the biography of fugitive cyberactivist Gaby Baillieux, Felix is quickly sucked into the orbit of forces beyond his control.
To confuse matters, Gaby is the daughter of Felix's university friend and unrequited love, the mercurial Celine.
Over it all looms the long shadow of Woody ''Wodonga'' Townes, Melbourne property developer, self-made battler, unlikely supporter of worthy causes, and the sponsor of Felix's book about Gaby.
Despite the contemporary themes of surveillance, hacktivism, global corporatism and such complexities of the digital generation, these technological platforms are portrayed as
simply a new battleground for the subterranean conflicts of history.
Carey sees modern Australian history as dominated by a client relationship with the US, culminating in what he has described as the ''bloodless coup'' against Labor PM Gough Whitlam in 1975.
His view is this was orchestrated by the US due to Whitlam's firming up against its military and intelligence interests. The personal travails of the characters of Amnesia are what makes this novel come alive, though.
The amnesia Carey refers to is not just the official silences, control and manipulation of the public sphere, but the secret histories of individuals whose actions and interactions send fracture lines running through the trajectory of their lives.
Carey's skill as a writer, and his insights, come from the intertwining of a rich supply of humour with an uneasy vision of the darkness lurking beneath everyday surfaces.
His characters are larger and louder than life, and this magnification can have its disadvantages. At times the manic style verges on the slapstick, which can jar with the weighty concepts.
No matter. This novel does not disappoint. At its best, Carey's writing crackles with intensity, with a spot-on capture of colloquial language and the internal life of his characters.
In New Zealand, the same social and political themes are duplicated on a more parochial and eccentric frequency. Amnesia cuts close to the bone.
Victor Billot is editor of The Maritimes, the magazine of the Maritime Union.
WIN A COPY
The ODT has five copies of Amnesia, by Peter Carey, (RRP $40) to give away courtesy of Penguin.
For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email and ''Amnesia book competition'' in the subject line by 5pm on Tuesday, December 9.
LAST WEEK'S WINNERS
Winners of last week's giveaway, Before After by Anne-Margot Ramstein, courtesy of Walker Books, were: Ildi Campbell and Sarah Spruyt, both of Dunedin, Geordie Henderson, of Seacliff, Pam Hobbs, of Oamaru, and M Jane Green, of Kakanui.
