MILES WALKER, YOU'RE DEAD

"I'm right up there with Rembrandt," boasts the eponymous art student in Jaivin's undemanding but entertaining satire. Australia is in the grips of an unprecedented love affair with all things cultural: hoodlums argue about Shakespeare productions and composers do tampon ads. Miles, a "serious" young painter, spends most of his time fretting over how to become immortal. He shares a loft with ZakDot, a flamboyant "pre-conceptual" artist; Maddie, a punk Amazon who likes to blow things up; and Thurston, a freelance statistical analyst with a medieval fetish. (It's Thurston who determines that the formula for Miles's success must include dying young.) The artistic community is driven underground when a woman named Destiny Doppler becomes prime minister. Aided by Verbero, a coke fiend with a speech impediment, she heads the Clean Slate party, which is committed to wiping out all culture. Although moronic Destiny is "so suspicious of art that she once refused to wear a necklace when she found out it was made from cultured pearls," she decides to have her portrait painted—and Miles gets the job. When he unwittingly crosses Verbero, Miles finds himself facing "immortality" even sooner than he had wished. Jaivin milks her premise for all it's worth and allows farce to overwhelm the satire as she piles on ludicrous plot twists that culminate in a dreadfully trite ending. Still, it's hard not to be amused by the ceaseless one-liners and huge cast of flaky characters. (Oct. 1)

Forecast:Fans will want to see what the author of the internationally bestselling Eat Me is up to, and the cover art—a pair of men's jeans with a blob of green paint on the crotch—will grab the attention of browsers.