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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780307263728
ISBN number: 030726372X
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: February 05, 2008
Publishing house: Knopf
Release Date: February 05, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 211855
Studio: Knopf
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Product Description:
When the boy was almost eight, a woman stepped out of the elevator into the apartment on East Sixty-second Street and he recognized her straightaway. No one had told him to expect it. That was pretty typical of growing up with Grandma Selkirk . . . No one would dream of saying, Here is your mother returned to you.
His Illegal Self is the story of Che—raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, he is the precocious son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties. Yearning for his famous outlaw parents, denied all acess to television and the news, he takes hope from his long-haired teenage neighbor, who predicts, They will come for you, man. They’ll break you out of here.
Soon Che too is an outlaw: fleeing down subways, abandoning seedy motels at night, he is pitched into a journey that leads him to a hippie commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland. Here he slowly, bravely confronts his life, learning that nothing is what it seems. Who is his real mother? Was that his real father? If all he suspects is true, what should he do?
Never sentimental, His Illegal Self is an achingly beautiful story of the love between a young woman and a little boy. It may make you cry more than once before it lifts your spirit in the most lovely, artful, unexpected way.
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Rated by buyers 
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Each chapter is a jigsaw puzzle piece and when put together, the portrait is complex, engaging, terrifying, and ultimately satisfying. There is a challenge to the narrative, like Carey expects the reader to fill in the blanks, and thus brings him into the story actively. A sense of palpable dread hangs over the entire affair as the reader invests emotionally into the fate of the mother (who is no mother) and the son. This is a terrific, fierce novel.
Rated by buyers 
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Who ever wrote the inside flap summing up this book did a better job then the other telling his boring no one cares story. If you can even call it a story cause there wasnt much of one.Nothing happens at all, after the kidnapping. Dont waste your time with it, there are a million books that are better and more enjoyable to read.
Rated by buyers 
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For somebody who grew up in the sixties, I found this novel to be very interesting. Yet, I have to admit I was a bit confused in the very first chapter. I found myself rereading scenes, struggling to understand whether or not the girl was in fact Che (the boy's) mother, or not. The individual scenes are fascinating, and I was very interested in watching the relationship between Dial and the boy evolve, however vague. I would have liked a little more help from the writer in terms of better defining the relationships. I am a Carey fan, and I loved Theft - this one not so much, but I'll be looking for his subsequent one.
Rated by buyers -
I was trapped on a plane reading this book. It's so disappointing. You want to toss your hands up and say WHO CARES? It was 200 pages devoid of anything worth reading.
Rated by buyers -
Seven-year-old Che, the son of absent revolutionaries, lives with his grandmother on New York's Upper East Side. One day, a woman named Dial, who Che believes is his mother, whisks him away from everything familiar. Che and Dial end up at a hippie commune in the Australian outback. In an academic sense, I recognize the talent behind Carey's sensitive and nuanced portrayal of the mother-son relationship, but I didn't really enjoy reading this novel. For one thing, the Australian outback sounds terribly grim. Everyone is rude or weird, dusty, and hungry. For another thing, a good bit of the narrative is improbable. Why Australia? There's also a nudist who doesn't really have a well-understood place in the story. Overall, His Illegal Self lacks cohesion and appeal despite the masterful depiction of Che's relationship to Dial.
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