How do you carry on when loss and grief are continually happening to you and around you? Australian playwright and actor George Kemp confronts this question head-on in his sensitive, heartfelt debut novel, Soft Serve. He brings to life an ensemble of rich, emotional characters who are navigating life in a small, regional town and whose stories are set against the backdrop of raging bushfires. Stuck in the local Maccas, a group of friends – Fern, Ethan and Jacob – are thrown into a complicated love triangle, even as they mourn their dead friend, Taz. 

Grief moves through the characters like an active, invisible entity, possessing them all differently. They all yearn for something permanent and tangible, something to hold on to. Amid this turmoil, Kemp captures queer longing perfectly – in this tale, it’s achingly, painfully earnest. He also just lets life happen to his characters; he lets the consequences of their choices be what they are and doesn’t offer up easy solutions or entirely hopeful endings. 

I’m drawn to Australian fiction like this – fiction that allows the poetry in the ordinary and everyday to act as it does; to thrive on its own rather than perform. I appreciate that Kemp doesn’t opt for easy generalisations about small-town Aussie upbringings or residents. His desire for specificity stands out in myriad ways, but perhaps most distinctly in how he represents and describes mothers. There’s a certain reverence that comes across, showing them as strong anchors during crises – for their own children and everyone else’s. Pat and Angie are versions of mothers who are familiar, fully realised and multifaceted. 

Soft Serve is a hearty gut-punch of a coming-of-age story with an overarching sense that people are bigger than the small towns in which they grew up. As I spent time with these characters, I couldn’t help but love and feel for them.