This is a hilarious, feel-good book about a guy who’s languished forever (more or less happily) unemployed with his mates in Bankstown, Sydney.

At 29 he somehow scores a publicist’s job in a big publishing firm in a trendy part of Sydney. He moves house, but doesn’t lose his friends. And he finds true love. The different parts of him, and his worlds, become reconciled. Besides main character Declan (or Dec as he is to the Bankstown crew) there are two other male leads: Smithy, who embodies grungy Bankstown; and Matt, the experienced publicist, who is of the trendy inner west. They all become friends and Dec falls in love with the lustrous Anna, an editor from a wealthy background.

The novel beautifully sends up the hysterical pitch of late 90s grunge writing. A new genre may have to be made to accommodate this novel - although it has similarities (a kind of larrikin wit and irreverence) to Australian classics like Sun on the Stubble.