A Generous New year

O blog, I neglect you so - whatever words I have mustered I tend to hoard them and save them for the glide of pen across page. Here is hoping I can be more generous with them in the New Year.
Happy Holidays and a Generous New year.

The Chemistry of Tears - Peter Carey

Can I get excited now? Officially excited?

I think so, due for release in 2012 is the new Peter Carey. He is one of my favourite cups of tea and this story looks brewed just right. One thing I love about this time of year is the hints of the books of 2012.

A bit more about the book here from Penguin Books Australia.

When Catherine's lover dies suddenly, she has no-one to turn to - their affair had been disguised from their colleagues and his family - except her work. A middle-aged curator in a London museum, Catherine is given a very particular project by the perceptive head of her department: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a nineteenth century automaton - a beautifully made mechanical bird.

 When she discovers that the box also contains the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, she is partially rescued from one obsession by another - who were Henry Brandling and the mysterious, visionary clockmaker he hired to make a gift for his absent son? And what was the end result that now sits in pieces in her studio?  

 The Chemistry of Tears is both wildly entertaining and deeply moving, a portrait of love and loss that is simultaneously delicate and anarchic. At its heart is an image only the masterful Peter Carey could breath such life into - an object made of equal parts magic, art and science, a delight that contains the seeds of our age's downfall.

Have been slogging away editing and absorbing feedback and family dramas, so I shall dangle this, my carrot, a reward for when all is done.