was Carey's first novel written from his new home in America, and his first fiction to be based solely in contemporary setting since

and the short stories. It is a bleak and disturbing vision of a barbarous society. After the spacious panoramas and historical range of

and

, Carey restricts himself to almost classical limits of time and place. The tense action is based in the outer suburbs of contemporary Sydney over a period of four days, those being the divisions of the novel (chapters 1-29 Sunday/Monday; 30-45 Tuesday; 46-57 Wednesday; 58-61 Thursday). The pared-down narrative has the dialogic quality of a film-script and fluently interweaves strands of the present with the past as the hidden legacies of individual and social history…

1825 words

Citation: Woodcock, Bruce. "The Tax Inspector". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7891, accessed 27 November 2024.]