Praise

Winner of the 1992 Vogel Award for best Australian first novel, this tale of 20-something disassociation compares favorably to American fiction of the same genre. As the story begins, narrator Gordon Buchanan quits his job as a beer-stacker at a drive-through bottle shop in Brisbane. He and his live-in girlfriend Cynthia LaMonde, a waitress, inhabit a world of casual sex, plentiful drugs and partying till dawn--pastimes that don't really give Gordon much pleasure, plagued as he is by a sense of being unfulfilled. Love affairs gone bad and fantasies undercut by reality are the norm for a generation that stops doing something the moment it becomes work, that wants to win without competing because making an effort would render victory meaningless. McGahan writes about this alienated milieu with dark honesty in the spare prose style that has become de rigueur for tales of post-adolescent discontent. His novel escapes the flatness of some of its American cousins because the narrator has no pretensions, very little money and an apparent inability to get any pleasure or release from sex. A good first novel with an honest ending. ( May )