The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith is a novel by the Australian writer Peter Carey. It was first published by The University of Queensland Press in Australia and Faber & Faber in the United Kingdom in 1994. Subsequent editions and translations have appeared in the United States, France, Germany, and elsewhere. The principal character and narrator is a boy , Tristan Smith, who has been born with malformations to his face and limbs so extensive that the physicians who perform the delivery recommend that he be given no care. His mother, an unmarried actress named Felicity Smith, rejects the... doctors' advice and takes the infant home. Tristan is largely raised on the premises of the Feu Follet, an avant garde theatre collective of which his mother is the guiding force. His presumptive father is Bill Millefleur, an actor in the troupe and Felicity's lover, but two other men also exercise paternal roles in his life to an extent. One is Vincent Theroux, a manufacturer and politician, who has also been Felicity's lover; the other is Wally Paccione, an ex-convict who is the production manager of the Feu Follet.
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