Reviewed by Tina Irgang

Before you are halfway through this book, you may ask yourself if it is possible for an author to be too true to his characters.

Peter Carey’s latest novel is a complex study in grief. It ultimately rewards persistence, but the journey is no easy one for the reader. That’s not merely a result of the difficult subject, but also of Carey’s insistence to make us feel his characters’ state of mind. Much of the book is marked by disjointed, confusing narration, which seems to veer aimlessly from one event or subject to the next. It’s a fitting state of mind for characters torn apart at the seams by their emotional pain, but detracts from the reader’s ability to become truly invested in the plot or its protagonists.

The story begins with Catherine. She works at a London museum, where it is her task to restore old clocks and other mechanisms. Her life is turned upside down when her married lover dies unexpectedly. Devastated by her grief, Catherine must also confront the pity of her well-meaning co-worker Eric, who quietly persists in making things worse by trying to fix them.

In a desperate attempt to refocus Catherine and keep her sober, Eric finds for her a monumental restoration project involving a 19th-century automaton.

Catherine is initially reluctant but soon finds the diaries of the man who commissioned the automaton. That man is Henry, a 19th-century Englishman who depends for his livelihood largely on his wealthy industrialist family. Henry’s wife is unfaithful and, apart from an extremely close relationship with his son, he seems to have no human bond or purpose in his life.

Henry’s son is very ill and has taken a fancy to a drawing that shows a life-like mechanical replica of a duck. In a desperate effort to save his son’s life, Henry travels to the Black Forest in Germany to find a clockmaker skilled enough to replicate the duck. Catherine immediately grows obsessed with Henry and his quest. It quickly becomes clear that Catherine and Henry share a deep-seated loneliness. That loneliness is at least in part the result of their obsession with a single relationship, which leaves them with nothing to offer to anyone else.

Both Catherine and Henry are soon challenged in their obsessions by the persistent intrusion of (largely) well-meaning outsiders. In addition to her co-worker Eric, Catherine must learn to cope with her dead lover’s sons and a new assistant, who has a host of problems of her own. Henry, meanwhile, soon finds his quest hijacked by the apparently crazed German Herr Sumper. Sumper agrees to build Henry’s automaton, but only on his own terms and as a monument to a former mentor whom Sumper views as something of a demigod genius. Sumper is assisted in his work by an apparently autistic boy who has a near-supernatural talent for the construction of complex mechanisms.

The multiple layers of the plot are related by multiple narrators. Catherine narrates approximately half the book, while the other half is made up of Henry’s diaries. Catherine’s grief has made her self-destructive and anti-social, but she makes for surprisingly good company. Her acerbic observations about her “appallingly young and eager” assistant and the bureaucratic “procedures meeting” which must be gone through before a restoration can begin, quickly endear her to the reader. Even Catherine’s occasional outbursts of rage serve to show that she is always one step ahead of the reader.

On the other hand, despite the obvious parallels between Catherine and Henry’s situation in life, it’s hard to understand quite what she sees in his diaries. The diaries are often exasperatingly difficult to follow, as Henry tends to jump back and forth in time and is prone to sudden digressions, disrupting the flow of his story. Throughout, it becomes increasingly clear that Henry also has a tendency to omit key plot points — possibly intentionally.

It’s a frustration that’s shared by Catherine, who at one point admits that “one was often confused or frustrated by what had been omitted. The account was filled with violent and disconcerting ‘jump cuts.’”

But in spite of all this, there is an undeniable magic to this book. It is filled with moments of beauty, such as when the automaton has been restored to its full glory and performs for an audience for the first time in more than a hundred years.

While the nature of Henry’s diaries makes it difficult to establish a close emotional bond with the characters he describes, it’s still possible to be charmed by his Quixotic quest and the surreal characters he encounters. Sumper in particular is frequently touching in his tender love for the autistic child and his determination to use Henry’s automaton as a way to memorialize his beloved mentor.

Catherine’s part of the action is set during the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Both she and her assistant share a fascination for a webcast which shows the spreading blanket of oil in real time. Pained and frustrated by humanity’s inexplicable tendency to self- destruct, they nevertheless find it impossible to look away. That is The Chemistry of Tears in a nutshell.

Tina Irgang is a full-time editor for a business-to-business publishing company. When she’s not writing or editing, she reads anything and everything.