Final Draft - Great Conversations

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. Naima Brown’s essays have appeared in Vogue, the Guardian, and more. She wrote, along with Melissa Doyle, the non-fiction book How to Age Against the Machine and is the author of The Shot.  Mother Tongue is her second novel. Ever since the birth of her daughter Jenny, Brynn’s life has been ruled by The Schedule; a clockwork routine that means Jenny will love her and Brynn will be the mother she know she can be.  Her husband Eric works hard for the family and Brynn will too. Her best friend Lisa always tells she has the perfect life and if Brynn doesn’t feel like that’s true well then maybe she just needs to work harder at it. Maybe it’s the working hard that did it. Why Brynn was outside on the icy step, taking the fall and then ending up in a coma. When Brynn awakes from her coma her life is still the same picture of suburban idyll. It’s just Brynn doesn’t seem to fit it anymore. She speaks fluent French, a thing called Foreign Accent Syndrome, and English is an effort. Suddenly her world feels strange. Brynn is a new person, and while Jenny still accepts her mother, no one else seems to. Eric is becoming withdrawn, even hostile. Her parents are avoiding her and Lisa thinks she might be faking and is eying of Eric. It’s all too much and so Brynn leaves… Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Omar Sakr’s The Nightmare Sequence Omar is an award winning poet and writer from Western Sydney. His works include the novel, Son of Sin and the poetry collection The Lost Arabs, which won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Omar joins us with his new collection The Nightmare Sequence, illustrated by Dr Safdar Ahmed

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Thomas Vowles’s Our New Gods Thomas Vowles is a screenwriter and novelist. His debut novel is Our New Gods. Ash has recently arrived in Melbourne and is seeking to define himself outside of his small town existence. When he meets Luke it’s love-at-first-sight, at least for Ash. Luke is gorgeous and seems to be everything; great apartment, cool friends, hot boyfriend. Raf is something else; cool, in control, dangerous. At least according to Booth, and Booth is scared…

Brandon Jack is the author of the acclaimed memoir 28.  He’s also a footballer, who played for the Sydney Swans and in his debut novel Pissants he combines his sporting prowess and literary flare into a unique and memorable narrative. At an unnamed footy club the reserves team are waiting for the call up to the big leagues.  Calling themselves the Pissants, they train at least as much as they complain, honing the skills that keep them nominally in the club’s good books. In the meantime they will drink, take drugs, kidnap dogs and every now and then reflect on what they’re doing.  On its surface, Pissants could be taken for a romp through the bad behaviour of footballers. We get to know each of the group by their nicknames; Fangz, Stick, Squidman, Big Sexy and  Pricey. The nicknames, and the stories that coined them, get their own chapter leaving the reader in no doubt these guys have a knack for trouble. There’s not a lot of football being played here, much to the Pissants' chagrin. But that doesn’t the boys don’t train and party hard, making sure they diligently uphold club culture, even if they don’t always remember doing it.  The antics of the group are laid bare in a range of chapters as innovative in their style as they are often depraved in their action. We are privy to the many and detailed rules of pub golf, a closed Whatsapp group that couldn’t withstand public scrutiny, and an anthropologically driven interpretation of sports media interviews. In these sections Jack plays with form even as he dives beneath the surface of the players we might otherwise see as louts at best and criminals at worst. Because Pissants tells us the tales that don’t make the papers. Whilst it offers us an inside view of the semi-pro locker room it, Pissants also shows us exactly how raw, stupid and unthinking these guys can be. Except they’re not unthinking. Beneath the ill-advised decisions and startling acts of group think we are given an insight into the personalities and developing characters of a group of young men who probably have too much free time.  Pissants isn’t a morality tale. That wouldn’t ring true for the assembled group of players, many of whom come out worse the wear they put themselves through. The novel does offer the reader a look at how the players are not just the drug-addled brats they sometimes pretend to be. The offer of something more is exemplified by the novel’s counternarrative. Eliott is offered to the reader unadorned by a nickname and adrift from the club. He’s travelling through Europe and seems to possess none of the joie de vivre his playing companions take into every experience. In Eliott we are given a look at the personality behind the facade. His search for something outside the world that offered everything until it didn’t, mirrors the journey each of his player mates is inching towards.  Pissants is a cleverly written and immensely readable novel. Its larrikin air both depicts and subtly critiques its subject matter, giving the reader a chance to pull back the dirty socks and find out a little more about the masculinity fueling Australian sporting culture.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Samuel Wagan Watson is a poet of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German, Dutch and Irish descent. He’s won the 1999 David Unaipon Award for Emerging Indigenous Literature, and The Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize amongst others. Paul Collis is a Barkindji man, born in Bourke in far western NSW on the Darling River. Dancing Home is his first novel and won the David Unaipon Award in 2016. The First Nations Classics series  from UQP ranges across genres, including memoir, fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The series is inspired by the richness and cultural importance of First Nations writing, and aims to bring new readers and renewed attention to brilliant, timeless books that are as relevant today as they were on first publication. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Web - ⁠https://2ser.com/final-draft/⁠  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

Thomas Vowles is a screenwriter and novelist. Today we’ll be discussing his debut novel Our New Gods. Ash has recently arrived in Melbourne. Like so many who’ve come from a regional town he’s looking to define himself whilst feeling wary of being .  When he meets James it’s love-at-first-sight, at least for Ash. James is gorgeous and seems to have everything; great apartment, cool friends, hot boyfriend. James may not want Ash for a lover but his friendship gives Ash entry to a cool new world, with an equally cool set of friends. Amidst this group is James’s boyfriend Raf. Raf is something else; cool, in control, dangerous. Ash sees this firsthand at a party and hears it from Raf’s ex Booth.  Booth is scared, and Ash is desperate to find out why before James gets dragged into it. — Our New Gods is a stunning thriller with more twists than I rightly know what to do with in our short time together. On its surface we have a love triangle with James and Raf at the centre and Ash staring on, unrequited but willing to do anything for James. As James tries to find his footing in Melbourne’s gay scene he can’t help but acknowledge to the reader that it’s only James he wants. Thus Ash is flung into an increasingly ill-advised set of scenarios as he frantically scrambles to protect James from the danger he sees in Raf. The novel plays with the tension between Ash’s desperation and the very real set of escalating circumstances surrounding the young men’s lives. Everyone in Our New Gods feels poised on the cusp of something whilst living at the breakneck speed of your twenties when everything seems possible but nothing feels like it has consequences. When it all comes to a head we as readers must also accept that we’ve dragged along for the ride, but now things are going to get real. Our choices in identifying and feeling kinship with the characters will extract a toll on us as we have our expectations thrown to the wind in the novel’s third act. Our New Gods is exciting, fun reading. Vowles’s skill as a screenwriter is brought to bear in the pacing and visual styling of the novel. His writing compels, even as it beguiles and tricks the reader into placing their trust in smoke.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Matt Rogers is the best selling author of more than thirty novels and is joining us today with his new novel, inaugurating his Logan Booth series, The Forsaken. You never know who your neighbours are behind closed doors. Logan Booth is counting on that. He doesn’t want to get chummy with the denizens of Brownsville and he doesn’t want them knowing anything about him. Especially not his past. It’s a Devil’s Bargain. One that will see Logan’s only friend killed before his eyes, forcing Logan back into a life he thought he’d left behind forever.  Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Sinead Stubbins is a writer, editor and cultural critic, and the author of In My Defence, I Have No Defence. Her debut novel is Stinkbug. The advertising agency where Edith works is going through a restructure. Everyone’s worried the new Swedish owners will bring their own team and they’ll be out of a job. With redundancies the hot topic round the watercooler, a select group of Winked employees are chosen for a corporate retreat. Edith’s made the cut and assumes this is her chance to show her worth. The assignment is simple; find a best work friend. Easy for Edith, she’s already got Mo and while she’s got some other stuff going on, surely she can fake her way through a weekend. Sure there’s dead birds at the perimeter and Edith is hiding a dark secret. But really, what could go wrong in a converted Convent watched over by a saint called Christina the Astonishing?! Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

Presenting a poem and reflection by Omar Sakr as part of his new collection 'The Nightmare Sequence'. *Content Warning - contains discussion of the genocide in Gaza

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Robbie Arnott is the award-winning author of Flames, The Rain Herron and Limberlost, and as is appropriate for an award winning author, he is joining us today because his most recent novel Dusk has won the Literary Fiction Book of the Year at the ABIA Awards. Twins Iris and Floyd figure they are close to the bottom when they receive word of a bounty on offer for anyone who can stop a Puma killing stock and shepherds in the highlands. With no guns and no experience, but also no other choice the pair make the journey into the unknown  Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

Today I’m bringing a book so good I’ve already given my copy to my mum, and she’s loving it. Laura Elvery’s Nightingale. Laura Elvery is the author of Trick of the Light and Ordinary Matter. As readers of Ordinary Matter will know, Laura has an interest in women who have been ignored, or perhaps misunderstood by history. Nightingale takes us into the final days of the life of iconic nurse, statistician and social reformer Florence Nightingale. At ninety years old, Nightingale knows how much she has achieved in her life. Yet as she lies in her bed, all of that still doesn’t compensate for the infirmity she feels. That and the fact her only visitor is Mabel, her housekeeper and nurse. At least the window is open, bringing in the lifegiving air she has sought out her entire life. At her age a knock on the door could as well be a dream, and so it is with some surprise that Florence welcomes into her home a young soldier. A man who says he met Florence in Scutari, a man named Silas Bradley.  From here we are thrown back into Florence’s past as we revisit her time at Scutari, the military hospital where she made her reputation. We confront the horrors of war and the reality of women who sought to be more than the confines of the society that raised them. As I began reading Nightingale I reflected on how my understanding of Florence Nightingale exists in broad brushstrokes and contains perhaps as much myth as fact. Her historical figure can sometimes seem two-dimensional as the lady with the lamp, the founder of modern nursing. Of course she was also famed for her statistical work that helped identify the impacts of unclean environments in war mortality, significantly ahead of the development of germ theory.  The novel acknowledges the legend as well as the woman in an intricate narrative exploring the very human factors of the work of nursing. Of course Nightingale is heralded for the lives her pioneering work saved, but the novel gives equal hearing to the lives lost and the impact these losses made on the life of Florence Nightingale. Florence’s story entwines with that of Jean, a young nurse in Florence’s care and that of Silas, equally young and a soldier in the war. That their lives are given central concern highlights the fact that so many like them were to die with their lives untold.  Elvery’s narrative offers an ingenious trick of immortality in the telling of these exemplary lives and also offers us as readers a chance to wonder at the whole process of celebrating the brutality they were forced to be a part of. There’s a central conceit to Nightingale that I’m going to leave unspoken in this review. It asks the reader to consider the myth making as only one part of the story of Florence Nightingale and offers up a different type of endurance to the legacy of being so great in the face of so much horror. This conceit can be paired with the refrain ‘Let me tell you what it’s like’, wherein characters seek to explain, to offer up, or perhaps transfer something of their experience as form of bondage but also connection.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Hilde Hinton is the bestselling author of The Loudness of Unsaid Things, and A Solitary Walk on the Moon. Hilde is joining us today with her latest novel The Opposite of Lonely. Rose is grateful for her life. Her beautiful son and their little house. Her kind boss and caring inlaws.  Rose is also aware that she’s not quite the person she thought she’d be, or used to be. Rose isn’t sure when life got off track, but feels inspired when a new friend comes into her life like a breath of fresh air and with the possibility of new things. Ellie is full of promises about enlarging Rose’s little life. Rose just has to figure out what size she is comfortable with. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

Mandy Beaumont is the author of The Furies and Wild Fearless Chests. She’s been nominated for a slew of awards for her writing including the Stella Prize. Mandy’s latest novel is The Thrill of It. *Content Warning for Violence Against Women* In the late 1980’s Sydney is a long way from the global city we know today. From the beach to the Mountains awash with fluro tracksuits, hypercolour t-shirts, thongs and walkmans the harbour city can still feel like a village in your own little patch  Emmerson gets to enjoys the best of it, with harbour views courtesy of a legacy from her grandmother, the socialite and designer Marlowe Kerr. But when the body of a woman in her eighties is discovered in the northern beaches the city will be thrown into chaos. Older residents lock themselves in their homes for fear the killer may strike again.  Emmerson herself is thrust back to another legacy of her adored grandmother. Marlowe was killed in a strikingly similar way. A case that was never solved. Emmerson knows the police won’t make the link, and she doesn’t trust them to. But what does that mean for Marlowe and this other woman. More importantly, if the killer has returned after twelve years, could they kill again?  — Mandy Beaumont has taken as the basis for her novel a series of murders committed against women in 1989-90 in Sydney. At the time the press dubbed the murderer ‘Granny Killer’, thereby robbing the women of their identities and reducing them to a vicious parody of their age. In Beaumont’s story it is the killer who will be reduced while the women are given their due and through the fictional figure of Marlowe Kerr, celebrated for all the mess and wonder of their storied lives. The Thrill of It has all the promise of true crime and mystery in its set up, yet is neither and offers a wholly original beast. Simultaneously thriller and social critique, a takedown of the establishment that failed these women and as Mandy describes it, a love-story between a granddaughter and the grandmother taken too soon. The character of Emmerson defies the literary conventions she seems destined to embody. As we begin the narrative she is listless, but quickly galvanises herself into action with the discovery of the first body. Emmerson has dreams of entering the police academy and avenging her grandmother, but these desires cannot simply overcome the fact that the late eighties was still dealing with gender equity (not that we’ve solved that one yet). The narrative swings between Emmerson’s story and the dark journey of the killer. In a grim but effective juxtaposition we travel along with the killer on his crimes and are given insight into the twisted psychology by which he justifies and exonerates himself. It’s a tremendous feat to carry such dark and violent impulses and Beaumont balances it without becoming gratuitous. The novel works within the historical setting and follows the case, whilst maintaining the distance of fiction. It allows us to see the problems that existed at the time and how limited perspective and oversimplification lead to so much death. I loved Mandy Beaumont’s The Furies for its righteous anger and driven storytelling. The Thrill of It offers the reader a completely different sort of tale, propulsed by the same energy and spirit.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Shelley Burr is the bestselling author of Wake and Ripper. Her debut Wake won the UK Crime Writers' Association's Debut Dagger Award, the Australian Book Industry's Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year and the Australian Crime Writers Association's Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction. Shelley’s joining us today with her new novel Vanish It’s virtually impossible to be a private investigator from prison but that’s not stopping Lane Holland. When the opportunity to do some real investigating arrives, Lane jumps at the opportunity, even if it could jeopardize his parole. The Karpathy farm is full of outsiders but even still Lane is on the fringes as pokes around the spate of missing persons that have moved through the farm over the years.  As Lane tries to figure out whether the organic, peace and love is for real or just a front, he must also contend with the possibility that someone knows his true purpose on the farm. That he might just be next person to vanish without a trace. ⁠Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople⁠ Want more great conversations with Australian authors? ⁠Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week⁠. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - ⁠https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/⁠  Facebook - ⁠https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/⁠

Sinead Stubbins is a writer, editor and cultural critic, and the author of In My Defence, I Have No Defence. Her debut novel is Stinkbug. The advertising agency where Edith works is going through a restructure. Everyone is worried that the new Swedish owners will bring their own team and they’ll be out of a job. When a select group are chosen for a corporate retreat Edith assumes that this is her chance to show her worth. The assignment is simple; find a best work friend. Easy for Edith, she’s already got Mo and so the retreat should be a piece of cake. I mean what could go wrong in a converted Convent watched over by a saint called Christina the Astonishing?! — I found Stinkbug an absolutely wild ride. Full disclosure, I don’t work in the sort of corporate environment where you get sent on retreats, although I have done the odd team planning day. For all I know the narrative of Stinkbug could be an accurate reflection of modern corporate culture. I really hope not though. Stubbins has offered us up the perfect satire of the modern workplace. The sort of story that confirms all our worst fears whilst also inviting us to root for… probably Edith but at the very least that they all get out of this alive. As the team from Winked arrive at Consequi (yes, the names) we have already learned a little about the cast of misfits masquerading as the impossibly hip and talented. Our point of view, Edith is variously a complicated mess of neuroses, or an aloof and intimidating cool kid in the company. That all important perspective is going to become very important as we not only delve deeper into Edith’s psyche but also fall down the rabbit hole of Consequi’s attempts to break down the barriers of the Winked employees and make them a better family of creatives.    Edith is fearful she is the perpetual outsider and this has made her an almost perfect cipher and corporate chameleon. I genuinely vacillated between loving and hating her machinations, and am still a little unsure how I feel about the narrative's resolution. The story treats us to the banal and unhinged things that can happen on a corporate retreat. The stakes are constantly being upped by the impossibly calm ‘Group Leaders’ and only Edith seems to get that something weird is going on. But then again, for all I know psychological warfare is completely normal in modern office settings. The uncertainty is part of the fun of Stinkbug and so maybe I should just say that this book had me giving the odd snort of laughter that I generally try to avoid unless I’m completely alone. As an outsider to the culture I found it fascinating; both hilarious and horrifying. I’m hoping to meet a corporate insider who can give me more insights into whether or not this really was just a fever dream!

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator from German. He’s joining Andrew with his debut novel, The Passenger Seat, which was shortlisted for the Novel Prize. On the verge of their final year of high school, Adam and Teddy are looking for adventure. On a whim they pack some camping gear and drive north. Teddy isn’t sure whether his girlfriend will miss him, if they’ll even be a couple when he gets back Adam. Well Adam’s plan only points in one direction, and he has no intention of ever returning. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Laura Elvery is the author of Trick of the Light and Ordinary Matter, which won the 2021 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection. Laura’s joining me today with her first novel Nightingale. At ninety years old, Florence Nightingale knows how much she has achieved in her life. All of that still doesn’t compensate for the infirmity she feels. That and the fact her only visitor is Mabel, her housekeeper and nurse. At least the window is open. At her age a knock on the door could as well be a dream, and so it is with some surprise that Florence welcomes into her home a young soldier. A man who says he met Florence in Scutari, a man named Silas Bradley.  ⁠Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople⁠ Want more great conversations with Australian authors? ⁠Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week⁠. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - ⁠https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/⁠  Facebook - ⁠https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/⁠

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Gretchen Shirm is the author of Having Cried Wolf, Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room. You’ve met her on Final Draft before and today she joins us with her new novel Out of the Woods. Jess has taken a job in the Hague, working as the secretary to an Australian judge presiding over the trial of a man accused of war crimes. As she struggles to find an equilibrium listening to the horrors committed in war, Jess also  struggles within herself to reconcile conflicting feelings about her role as mother and daughter, and what they mean to the people she loves. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/

Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator from German. His debut novel, The Passenger Seat, was shortlisted for the Novel Prize. Content warning for mentions of violence. On the verge of their final year of high school, Adam and Teddy are looking for adventure. On a whim they pack some camping gear and drive north. Adam’s got a drivers license and a truck. Teddy has a gun license and on their way out of town the boys stop at a camping goods store and buy a rifle. They’re not sure what they’ll encounter in the wild but they want to be prepared for anything. Teddy’s family don’t seem too fussed by the whole affair and he isn’t sure whether his girlfriend will miss him. It’s no0t that serious and he doubts they’ll even be a couple when he gets back Adam’s dad’s weirdly gotten worse since he stopped drinking. Teddy may be talking about school but Adam’s plan only points in one direction, and he has no intention of ever returning. The Passenger Seat begins with Adam and Teddy egging each other on to jump off the bridge outside their town. In this moment they are exploring the ways they can both push, and rely on each other. A sudden jolt before he is ready and Teddy is furious at Adam as he hurtles towards the water, only to emerge triumphant, laughing at his friend beside him. In this moment neither they, nor the reader suspect what is to come for them. They are simply two boys, or perhaps young men trying to understand their place in the world. Their road trip begins as all road trips begin, full of promise and the expectation that what comes next is unpredictable. We ride alongside Adam and Teddy, sleeping in the cramped tray of the truck and wondering exactly when they plan on washing. The titular passenger seat working as both a metaphor for who is in control, and a reminder of how uncomfortably close we are to the two in their self imposed exile. Now about now I’m going to acknowledge that I’m glossing over some events in the novel. This inflection point changes the journey for Adam and Teddy and forces both the boys and the reader to wonder exactly where the story could possibly go from here. Adam and Teddy’s journey is remarkable simply because it need not be remarkable. Khurana uses the everyman disaffection of the two boys to offer up a perfectly innocuous trip that spirals out of control. At a certain point we are privy to Adam’s gleeful reflection that when people come searching for answers their story will be devastatingly inscrutable. I found The Passenger Seat to be one of those genuinely unputdownable books. Much like the boys trip it takes on its own momentum and refused to let me go as I devoured it in a weekend.  If I go too much into themes I run the risk of spoilers but I will say that it engages somewhat topically with the broader social conversation around young men and the forces that compel them in their actions.  In this Teddy and Adam’s story is juxtaposed with a vignette of a seemingly minor character in the aftermath of the road trip. The two stories are seemingly disparate but highlight the same sense of control or relinquishing of one’s control that underscores so much of what makes male behaviour unconscionable. The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana is a tremendous novel; timely and urgent. Read it now and I suspect you’ll be ahead of the conversation to come as this book gathers momentum.