Love or hate Sydney; love and hate Sydney; love to hate Sydney - most Australians fit into the first two of these categories, while Melbournians are chiefly found in the third. But nobody is indifferent to this great city, one of the most mythologised in the modern world. Before writing about it - even when judging somebody else's view of it - you should declare your interest. My mother came from Sydney and looked on her Brisbane life as exile. I went there each Christmas in the Thirties, and ever since have regarded it as my authentic Babylon. I have lived there only briefly but visited it often. I am a Category Two admirer: arriving in Sydney elates me, listening to its denizens praising their city depresses me. Sydneysiders are inveterate nourishers of their local legends, the majority of which are self-serving. Unfortunately, Peter Carey's short book perpetuates some of the most venial of them, though it gives them a high-gloss magical polish. Perhaps Carey wants to present Sydney to the world as the latest and grandest of super-cities, a sort of compensation for coming himself from respectable Bacchus Marsh.

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