None of the rest of them, he believes, has the heart to do the job. The office management, she is sure, was aware of the affair, now ended, and is punishing her by sending her here: “To be sent to this decaying door in Franklin was not only humiliating but upsetting on another level after 12 years at the Taxation Office, she was being turned into something as hateful as a parking cop.” Maria admired Alistair for the passion with which he pursued the corrupt upper class, a passion that kindled her own, and which became an on-the job-hubris that led to his downfall and firing. She becomes, very quickly, a compelling moral presence throughout the novel in ways we might not even know to hope our tax inspectors could ever be-an idealist who sees herself as catching criminals who cheat the public, she is pregnant after an affair with a married superior in her office, her hero, Alistair. And taxes are not the villain here nor, for that matter, is the inspector, Maria Takis, the novel’s unlikely heroine. The Tax Inspector is a good reminder of just how punk rock Peter Carey is: a novel structured across four days in the life of a down and out auto dealership, this story of the tax audit of Catchprice Motors, and the Catchprice family in Sydney for whom it is named, becomes, in his hands, a complexly rendered portrait of some of humanity’s worst impulses, handled with a bare minimum of sentimentality.
In celebration, they’ve asked some of their favorite writers to take a fresh look at a few of the works that were selected for the program in its first five years, many of which-like Peter Carey’s tragicomic novel of a family-run car dealership-have become hallmarks of a moment in literary history. This year, Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program marks its 25th anniversary.
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