the shallow end

The one problem with finding a book you really enjoy reading and that is very hard to put down is that, well, it's very hard to put down and you end up reading it as quickly as you can... and then you get Reader's Remorse because there's no more book...

The Shallow End was one of those books, and I'm not just saying that because it was written by my newly rediscovered friend Ash. I started reading it at midnight last night, was up until about quarter past one when I decided I didn't want to put it down, but I probably should... then I picked it up again when I first woke up and spent about an hour reading in bed (which I haven't done in the mornings for a long while), then after I'd done everything else I needed to do, I picked it back up and finished it.

It's a hard book to classify and to review for a couple of reasons... firstly it's kind of hard to review because I know the author, and I think that coloured some of my feeling towards the novel, and also possibly made me read slightly more into some of it than was there. On the flipside it's hard to classify because it's kind of that I decided to call a "gay-themed oblique mystery"... there's no Poirot or Miss Marple sticking their nose in, and the nameless (and mostly descriptionless if it comes to that) first person narrator doesn't turn amateur sleuth and solve it all between gin & tonics and quips to his Girl Friday. I guess the publisher's tag line kind of sums it up to be honest... "a steady freestyle commentary on sex, celebrity and suntanning"...

But it is written with a really agreeable sense of witt and a fairly dry sense of humour, a lot of which reminded me very much of the Ashley I knew way back when (not surprising really).

It's also the kind of book that you could see yourself reading on holiday somewhere, sitting by the pool (even though that could be a little too close to home given the plot of the book) and having the whole day to do nothing but soak up the sun, indulge in your beverages of choice and read. There's something about it that has that "Vacation Book" feel to it, but at the same time it's not the kind of complete fluff that those books can sometimes be.

Because of the unnamed narrator, it also has a slightly "autobiographical" feel to it, but that could be equal parts because it's a contemporary story about a gay man living in Melbourne written in a conversational style by a contemporary gay man living in Melbourne, and those few details that do ring through as reminding me of Ash are only because I know him. And when I got to the "dirty bits" (which I think were fairly tame in the grand scheme of the universe) I was equally surprised because I know Ash... but I think if it had been any other author I probably wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.

I will say this for him though... the boy does have a flair for the language (and does love his puns, such as the name of one of the major characters, "Matt Gray")... and I kept finding myself getting lost in both the way the story was written (that conversational, contemporary style), but also in the words he used.

Although again, that downside of knowing the author made me put my "editor" hat on from time to time and want to correct some slightly odd phrasing of things (and at least one instance of "Italics Gone Wild" where the italics fell off the word they were supposed to be on and covered the first letter of the next word, but I can't remember where that was now) , but that's probably more about me than about the writing and I just had to keep telling myself "it's called 'style' and stop nitpicking"...

And you know how there are those words that imitate the sound they're describing (like buzz or bampf or swish... they're called onomatopoeia)... and I discovered my favourite new one... "fwisking", as in the sound sand makes when you brush it off stuff...

"... kind of like being on an archaeological dig, and I was there fwisking sand around with a little toothbrush..."

For some reason it's amongst my favourite sentences in the whole book... but I'm weird...

I would totally recommend the book... it's got stuff about swimming for those of you who like swimming... it's got wit and dry humour (and a few good bitchy one liners) for those of you who are all about that... and it's got the occasional dirty bit (just don't expect porn) for the filthy minded amongst us... but it's well worth a read...

I'd give it a solid 4½ out of 5...

Oh, and for anybody who does read the book, it took me until page 140 to work out who "Mr T" was... I'm a little slow sometimes (that and I didn't instantly connect him with Melbourne)...

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