'We’ve all had that feeling where the ground has shifted when you weren’t quite paying attention.'

Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction with the Kill Your Darlings First Book Club. For April that debut is Ronnie Scott's novel The Adversary, out now from Penguin Random House.

After a long winter in a creaky share house in Brunswick, a young man is pushed out of his comfort zone in search of friendship and love. This is a funny and exhilarating debut novel about sexuality, sociability and sticky summers at the pool.

Ronnie Scott writes essays and criticism for newspapers, websites and magazines. In 2007 he founded the Lifted Brow, an independent literary magazine. He's a Lecturer in the Writing and Publishing discipline at RMIT University. The Adversary is his first novel.

Our May First Book Club title will be Please Don't Hug Me by Kay Kerr (Text Publishing). Our theme song is Broke for Free’s ‘Something Elated’.

Further reading:

Read Ellen Cregan’s review of The Adversary in our April Books Roundup.

Read Ronnie’s Shelf Reflection on his reading habits and the writing that inspires him.

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