The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey

 

The Catchprices run a car dealership in Australia.  It was started by Albert and Granny Catchprice.  They had three children.  Mort still works at the dealership.  Cathy does also but wants to go on the road with her husband and their country western band.  Jack left the business and is now a prosperous real estate developer.  Mort had two children.  Johnny has left and is now a Hare Kristna although he leaves the commune periodically to try to straighten out things at home.  Benny is only sixteen and wants nothing more than to turn the dealership into what he just knows could be a business that could make them all rich.

Everything is put in jeopardy when Maria, a heavily pregnant tax inspector from the government comes to the business.  There are suspicions that Catchprice Automotive hasn't been on the straight and narrow with their tax payments and those suspicions are right on target.  Granny says she just signs what the others give her to sign while the children say that Granny is firmly in charge.  Things get even more complicated when Jack meets Maria and falls in love with her.

Peter Carey is one of my favorite Australian authors.  He has won the Booker Prize twice; once for The True History Of The Kelly Gang and the other time for Oscar and Lucinda.  He has written many other novels that illustrate life in Australia, always with an undercurrent of humor and a nod to the fact that Australia was settled by English convicts.  This book discusses sexual abuse of children by their fathers, another thing that has been handed down in the Catchprice family.  How it plays out across the generations is the dirty secret that fuels the family as the need to keep it secret binds them together.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.