Damaged Beasts
James Wood: Peter Carey’s ‘Theft’, 8 June 2006
“... a private language, a customised slang: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith and True History of the Kelly Gang are examples of that Joycean urge, the latter stupendously so. In Theft, proper names are always losing their integrity, and being privatised by the narrator. Michael’s father’s shop, Boones Butchers, was once vandalised into ‘Bones ... ”