The Chemistry of Tears / Peter Carey / 288 p.

 

The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey is an intricate story of grief, driven as much by its characters as by its plot.

When her married lover dies and she cannot so much as acknowledge her grief to anyone, Catherine, an horologist, throws herself into a new project, the reconstruction of an automaton, at the museum where she works, and finds herself sucked into the heartbreaking story of how it came to be built.

The Chemistry of Tears will appeal to those who like intricate, literary fiction. Similar titles include: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; Little Bee by Chris Cleave; My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey.