Final Draft - Great Conversations

Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer from Victoria. His short story ‘Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game’ won the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2022. Big Time is his first novel.

In the Free Republic of East Australiaeverything is just bonza. The people toe the line because nobody likes a tall poppy and the threat of indefinite detention is too real to tempt fate.

Music  helps to keep the population placated and no one does it better than The Acceptables. Their first album Artificial Beaches on Every Mountain, Artificial Mountains on Every Beach launched them into the public consciousness and now Julian Ferryman’s been summoned home lest he lose his spot on Bass for the band’s sophomore album. 

Julian’s been travelling outside the tightly controlled borders of the FREA and he’s not returning alone though; he’s seen the world and the FREA doesn’t love outsider perspectives. Julian’s also seen the future courtesy of the new designer drug ‘F’, but once you’ve seen your future, where does that leave your present? 

…

Big Time is a wild ride into a fascist dystopian future where everybody is tightly monitored but seems ok with it if it keeps the peace.

The Acceptables made good in this climate with their crowd pleasing debut but now they have to face up to sophomore album syndrome. Julian would love to just keep the public happy but lead singer Ash has other ideas. He’s got dreams of being a rock’n’roll messiah but seems to have forgotten how that story ended.

As the band enters their recording sessions the only thing keeping Julian going is looking into his future on ‘F’. These glimpses of his soon-to-be keep him calm. Nothing can surprise him and so he just lets life happen.

But ‘F’ isn’t just some benign vision of the future. People are tripping forward past their own deaths and all around the world an epidemic of coincidences make it seem like time has run out and is starting to repeat on itself.

It’s almost impossible to not make pithy comparisons to try and sum up Big Time. My best effort is Aldous Huxley writing Almost Famous as directed by David Lynch. I think the comparisons are a way of trying to grasp the originality and throw a blanket over the wild ideas long enough to try and wrap your mind around them.

At its heart this is a story about art and how it might just be our salvation, if we can truly embrace it and not just brush over its surface.

Stylistically the novel weaves throughout this future imperfect at a satisfyingly breakneck pace. Counternarratives weave through The Acceptable story building towards a dark horizon. Just as you start to think you can hum along to the tunes on the Acceptables new album, the bands about to go full Rumours and we find ourselves getting a little road trip freedom fighter and pulls the rug out again.

There’s a lot of buzz around Big Time and I have to agree that there’s something to hype here. Jordan Prosser has created a narrative that feels like it's talking to our era whilst also fizzing with an energy of a different time. The story is punchy and the characters as frustratingly real to the point that you’ll be rooting for them even when they start to annoy you with their poor decisions.

Hard recommend from me for Big Time. This is one I’d like to hear more from.

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.

Alice Robinson is the author of Anchor Point, which was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards and The Glad Shout, winner of the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.

Her new novel is If You Go.

Esther awakens in a strange room.

Strapped to a table, hooked up to machines and with a breathing tube down her throat, Esther has no memory of what this place is and how she got here. 

As the days pass Esther is attended by a single woman. Grace is attentive but Esther is in no mood for mystery and in her disoriented state she struggles to understand her situation.

Where are her children and how did she get here?

As her strength returns Esther searches her memory and latches onto a singular mission; that she must get out and find her kids.

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 from 2ser.

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Patrick Holland is a novelist and short story writer. He is the author of seven books, most notably The Mary Smokes Boys (2010), which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

Patrick’s new novel is Oblivion.

In a bar that wouldn’t let you in, sit men you can’t afford to drink with. These men make the deals that shape our world. 

One such man is on the make. He’s seeking a fortune that will allow him to escape and is conscious that this is not a game for old men. If he can survive a few more months, he might just be able to escape into his own oblivion.

…

Oblivion transports the reader into a world far above the everyday. We follow an unnamed protagonist as he moves throughout the one percent brokering the sort of deals that make the world turn.

The story opens into a whirlwind of airports and bars as we follow our man from one business meeting to the next. Our hero, if he is in fact the hero, lives in these liminal spaces where he can meet with the influential and this disappears to the next occasion.

The settings are lavish and the movers and shakers are aware of their privilege.

As we come to know our man, although never his name, we discover that he is on a personal mission of deliverance. The power wielded by those around is not so attractive as it is a means to disconnect. He is looking to make money fast and then get out. From the sleepless nights and the drugs and booze, he is looking for his own personal oblivion.

This demi-monde of powerful people offers access at all levels and our man has his official face as well as his scams. When he is manipulated into a government mission on the same day he meets the most beautiful woman he can imagine it becomes certain that loyalties will be tested. 

Oblivion is a stylish novel with a heart.

I’ve drawn a picture of a pacy thriller and that is certainly in there, but the novel also concerns itself with why we do what we do. From the outset the reader's eyes are drawn to the sky. To the semi-charmed world of high flyers who feel they cannot be touched. In this world where anything (it seems) is possible there is a tangible unease in our protagonist's mind. We quickly learn he is not planning on growing old and so it is even more enthralling when is drawn into attachments.

The pace of the plotting is juxtaposed with the interior world of a man who isn’t sure if any of it matters. As we meet other’s convictions our protagonist deftly sidesteps offering anything so gauche as an opinion.

But in trying to opt out he is vulnerable to being caught by something that might truly matter to him.

Oblivion is a treat with its sumptuous locations and for the balance it strikes being international espionage and matters of our interior world.

Come for the cocktails but stay for the conversation. Oblivion is a novel of ideas with an edge.

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.

Deborah Callahan has had a distinguished career in publishing working as a publicist, a publisher, and a literary agent.

Audrey Mendes knows she’s got talent, so why can’t anyone else see it?

Audrey’s the rock everyone else seems to be building their success on and that’s just not enough for her anymore. Whether it’s at the law firm where she works, in her love life, even the trivia team she plays with each week, everyone tells her she’s funny and then moves on to the next, more interesting thing.

It’s not nice being invisible but there’s also a lot you can get away with when no one’s looking.

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 from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

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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.

Susannah Begbie grew up in rural New South Wales on a sheep farm and is now a GP who has worked all over Australia. She is the winner of Hachette's Richell Prize for 2022.  The Deed is her first novel.

Tom Edwards has spent most of his life running the farm by himself. He’s not well pleased that his kids never came back to take their place on the land as he wanted.

Tom’s also dying and so he’s come up with a plan.

His kids will return to the farm and build him a coffin, in four days no less. They’ll build him a coffin and they’ll do it right, or he’ll disinherit the lot of them. 

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 from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

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Alice Robinson is the author of Anchor Point, which was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards and The Glad Shout, winner of the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.

Her new novel is If You Go.

Esther awakens in a strange room.

Strapped to a table, hooked up to machines and with a breathing tube down her throat, Esther has no memory of what this place is and how she got here. 

As the days pass Esther is attended by a single woman. Grace is attentive but Esther is in no mood for mystery and in her disoriented state she struggles to understand her situation.

Where are her children and how did she get here?

As her strength returns Esther searches her memory and latches onto a singular mission; that she must get out and find her kids.

Alice Robinson’s If You Go is a gripping, heart wrenching novel.

I’m really only setting up the beginning of the book there with my intro, and I’m going to be very careful how I proceed because If You Go packs one hell of a surprise for the reader.

The narrative follows Esther as she slowly orients herself to her strange surroundings and her mysterious carer Grace. Most difficult of all for Esther is that she cannot recall how she came to be in the strange place and struggles to recall the last moments of her life before awakening.

Esther is driven by an overwhelming urge to remember herself and return to her children. While she does not know her fate she is certain it cannot be good and she knows her kids will need her. This leads to her treating Grace with hostility, certain that there is something she is holding back; a secret to the strange building and Esther’s fate.

If You Go is concerned with the relationship between mothers and their children. 

Esther wakes with an overwhelming urge to find and protect her children, even as she finds herself reduced to the state of a child. She is completely at Grace’s mercy, not only for physical support but for a sense of orientation to her world.

Esther's vulnerability compels her to look back on her own jet-setting mother. Vivienne was formidable both in her presence and in her absence. This relationship in turn sets the stage for what Esther believes she might achieve with her own children.

As Esther pours over her past searching for a clue to her current fate she also looks for clues about how these relationships shaped her. Nagging at the back of her mind is the complete absence of family. No one has come to visit her and she wonders at how she became the person who could be abandoned.

I’m going to wind up the thematic discussion here and go back to referring obliquely to the incredible progress of the novel (that I just can't spoil here). Robinson deftly weaves Esther’s past and future into a rich evocation of families in all their messy glory.

Such is our immersion in Esther’s life you’ll forgive yourself if you are completely blindsided when revelation after revelation shows you this is not the world you thought it was.

If You Go is a powerful look at motherhood and family that shows us how a sense of belonging can carry us through so much and it’s absence is utterly devastating.

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You can get more books, writing and literary culture every week on the Final Draft Great Conversations podcast. Hear interviews with authors and discover your next favourite read!

Book Club 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 from 2ser.

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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.

Jenna Lo Bianco is a writer, teacher and Italophile. Her debut novel The Italian Marriage came out in 2023 with Pan Macmillan, part of a three book deal. Today Jenna joins us with her latest; Love & Rome.

When Stella Chiaro left Australia for the Eternal City, Rome it was always going to be all or nothing. Stella escaped a toxic relationship determined to never let anyone diminish her light again.

Now Stella’s on a deadline. Find a job in the arts by April 2nd or its back home to Australia.

She’s firm. Nothing can dissuade her. Especially not a handsome bar owner, and definitely not a brooding photographer…

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 from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

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Siang Lu is the author of The Whitewash, a tremendous mockumentary style exploration of the movie industry, which won an ABIA for best Audiobook. Siang is also the co-creator of The Beige Index, your definitive guide to how white your movie viewing really. 

Siang’s new novel is Ghost Cities.

Xiang is working as a translator at Sydney’s Chinese Consulate when it’s discovered he really doesn’t speak much Chinese. This is considered a less than desirable outcome and Xiang is both fired and culturally shamed for his lack of national pride. 

If that wasn’t insult enough Xiang soon discovers he is going viral in mainland China as the #BadChinese. Something of a cultural parody of the diaspora population. His digital notoriety sees him drawn into the orbit of the megalomaniacal director/entrepreneur Baby Bao. 

Xiang is quickly whisked off to the Ghost City of Port Man Tou, where he is set to star in the city wide production of Baby Bao’s simulation of reality. A movie within a city within a movie that is aiming to create an economy so circular it might just get vertigo. 

Siang Lu’s debut The Whitewash set the stage for his flair for cultural observation and a shrewd type of observational humour that honestly reminded me of the late great Terry Pratchett.

Xiang is a kind of everyman who is constantly off-balance in the funhouse mirror world of Baby Bao, who is himself a chimeric beast of modern globalist enterprise.

Now if this isn’t enough Ghost Cities establishes that the whole enterprise of Port Man Tou is a strange echo of a far distant Emperor and his quest to build a city and a dynasty that will carry his legacy into perpetuity. 

Ghost Cities is a novel that offers many rewards for both the casual or the committed reader. Lu’s writing is effortlessly clever and glides from misadventure to catastrophe, challenging the reader to root for both Xiang and Baby Bao despite their clearly being at odds (and Baby Bao truly seeming like a monster). This reading easily offers up the kind of blockbuster Baby Bao would love to make.

In the paralleled storylines, the clever mix of language and the intricately woven plotting we can also find a intellectually stimulating read; a kind of arthouse cinema for the soul that equally Baby Bao would also like to make (I mean he has taken over a whole city and is simultaneously filming all its inhabitants to film multiple movies at once).

Ghost Cities is a marvel and beyond all that just tremendously fun to read.

Go check out Ghost Cities from Siang Lu.

Loved this review?

You can get more books, writing and literary culture every week on the Final Draft Great Conversations podcast. Hear interviews with authors and discover your next favourite read!

Book Club 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 from 2ser.

Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading!

Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser 

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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.

Bri Lee is the award winning author of Eggshell Skull, Beauty and Who gets to be Smart. 

The Work is her first novel.

The art scene in New York is one of the toughest in the world. After years of struggle Lally is finally making her gallery work; supporting emerging artists and paying the bills.

Patrick feels like he is teetering on the verge of something. It feels like everyone in Sydney’s antiquities scene is suitably antique but maybe, with the right connections he can lower the age range.

Lally and Patrick both know they have to prove themselves. That success might as well be a synonym of sacrifice, but maybe there’s more than just The Work…

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 from 2ser.

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.

Siang is the author of The Whitewash which won an ABIA for best Audiobook. His new novel is Ghost Cities.

Xiang is working as a translator at Sydney’s Chinese Consulate when it’s discovered he really doesn’t speak much Chinese. Going viral online as the #BadChinese he is drawn into the orbit of megalomaniacal director/entrepreneur Baby Bao. 

Whisked off to the Ghost City of Port Man Tou, Xiang is about to star in the city wide production of Baby Bao’s simulation of reality, itself a strange echo of a distant Emperor and his quest to build a city and a dynasty that will carry his legacy into perpetuity. 

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 from 2ser.

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/