cryptic stories across centuries and continents

I need persistence and resilience to read Peter Carey. This time, the title 'The Chemistry of Tears' offered a chance to transcend art and science through human emotion. If only it was that simple... I could identify with the contemporary Catherine, a heartbroken conservator at a London museum, as she needed to hide her grief from the unexpected loss of her married lover. Her sensitive boss was perhaps more manipulative than he initially seemed, when he offered her the complex task of rebuilding an automaton, comissioned by the aristocratic Henry Brandling, a century earlier for his dying son. Henry's journey to the deep south of Germany to find a builder for this bizarre dream mirrors her own challenge to escape from reality. Their stories intertwine across time and geography as they explore the classic mysteries of life and death from two very different perspectives. It is so well written that there are so many hidden twists and turns, shared synchronicities and terrible tragedies...