- Deane has written a thoroughly mesmerising story about alienation and meaninglessness. It's full of sad characters desperate for friendship and belonging. They are needy or failures or bullies or predators, and whatever they experience they are barely able to tolerate.
- Patrick Pinnock's school friend OB, who commits suicide at the age of nineteen, was a sad, neglected son of unhappy parents. We meet Patrick, known as Pin, when he starts as a boarder at St Jude's Catholic school in Melbourne. He and OB bond. We then follow him as a journalist to Canberra to take a job as a ministerial press secretary, and finally as an unemployed, broke loser who was sacked from that job for 'bad behaviour'.
- There's a range of fascinating characters in the book that Pin bumps into on his life's journey. OB's mother 'Mrs O’Brien', unlike his own mother who was a religious nutcase, is sexy and attracted to him.- This novel is domestic noir at its best. Kitchens, bedrooms, meals, coffees, pools, homes, families - all feature.
- The final chapter of this rather short book (225 pages) is an imagined OB’s story. It is simply lovely and deeply reflective about the middle-aged Pin and OB’s mother, now an old woman, and the deep relationship they had forged.
- This beautiful novel is worth re-reading and re-reading. It's that good.
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