ON A DARK PATH TO SELF-DESTRUCTION
EARLY NOVEL FROM BEST-SELLING GAY AUTHOR CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS IS FINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE UK
BOOKS
WORDS: ULI LENART
BOOK OF THE MONTH
THE JESUS MAN
Christos Tsiolkas/Atlantic Books
→ This is an enthralling and dark novel from the award-winning author of The Slap, Loaded and Mercilesss Gods. Set mainly in Melbourne in the early 1990s, it tells the story of the Stefano family. Parents Maria and Artie are Greek and Italian but their three sons, Dom, Tommy and Louie, have grown up as Australian. Caught in the gaps between racial identities and haunted by personal mythology and exile, they all struggle to achieve a sense of belonging. But it’s middle sibling Tommy who is having the most trouble, and the central section of the novel charts his descent into madness. Grappling with redundancy and an escalating obsession with porn, he starts to experience increasingly disturbed fantasies of physical and sexual violence. As he falls through the cracks of society and away from the reach of his loved ones, Tommy’s feelings of disempowerment, lust, rage and revulsion combust — finally resulting in murder. In this compulsive, poignant and raw book, Tsiolkas dissects his core themes of race, masculinity, class, faith, politics and sex. Although not one for the easily shocked, this extraordinary early novel, now finally published in the UK for the first time, is simultaneously guttural and sublime.