Che Selkirk is a boy whose parents, members of the increasingly violent Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), have both disappeared, leaving him with his very rich grandmother. At the age of eight, a woman that Che recognises as his mother suddenly arrives and kidnaps him, taking him from New York to a remote town in Australia. This is how Illegal Self begins, and Che’s adventure through hunger, love and loss becomes a coming of age tale as he starts to understand who he is and where his future lies.

On the simplest of levels, the book is a fast-paced race across the globe as Che and the mother figure known to Che as "Dial" attempt to hide from the police and carve an existence for themselves. The plot is propelled by the readers' sense of dislocation in the distortions between the two narrative voices. Both Che and Dial are presented as equals – joint narrators in this story, but their stories aren’t identical. The reader is put in the uncomfortable position of being between them, unable to discount either the intensity of Che’s needs, or the combination of confusion and desire which motivates Dial. Both need one another, and continue to work together at avoiding the truth and avoiding the law, at the same time they find themselves removed from their usual lives and co-opted for causes they don’t believe in.

As in so many of Peter Carey’s novels, real love and visual artifice become the two forces that move the narrative along. It’s a search for a truth that isn’t nearly as obvious as one might think. It’s about the way love crisscrosses us – marks us, makes us whole, and hurts us at the same time. It isn’t just the love — both real and imagined — between Che and Dial, but also the odd love circulating uncomfortably between Dial, Che’s father, and the self-sufficient "hippy" Trevor who they meet in Australia.  Dial's growing sense of love, and the confusion that causes her pervades the story, as in this passage:

Oh Christ, she thought, what have I done? This had been an unblemished boy and the most remarkable thing about him had not been his handsome father’s face but his perfect trust, the way he put his hand in hers and sat beside her on the bus, so close, resting his cheek against her arm. His eyes had been limped, grey, in some lights, a lovely sulphur blue. His hair had been tousled, curly. It was hard not to touch him all the time. And here he was, his soul all curled up and fearful of attack. (24)

Carey handles it all very subtly, weaving privilege, pain and damage together into a beautiful tapestry. Nothing seems stable, and yet there’s something solid growing -- that “sharp searing pain that didn’t hurt” -- something real, absolutely true, and physical that stays through life’s changes.