![]() ![]() Set in the author’s hometown of Ballarat, which is vividly and lovingly brought to life that it honestly feels like another character in the book, cliched as that might sound, Anything But Fine centres on an aspiring gay 16-year-old ballet dancer, Luca, who is so talented and driven that a berth at the Australian Ballet School is all but assured. Literary hope may spring eternal but it’s not always rewarded alas thankfully the debut novel from Tobias Madden, Anything But Fine, ticks all three boxes with such vivacious energy and warm humanity, not to mention a healthy, heart-affirming dose of queer romance, that you spend much of your time being glad that novels like this exist. A story so enveloping and rapturously well-told that the temptation to stay up all night just to finish it is a very real one indeed and often acceded to, next day exhaustion be damned. ![]() ![]() ![]() Writing that sweeps you up in its grasp such that you often have to go and re-read a passage just because it feels gloriously alive, and.Characters who are so fully-realised that you swear they are but a sentence or two from leaping off the page.When you dive into a book, there are three key things you hope will be presented and accounted for: (cover image courtesy Penguin Books Australia) ![]()
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