A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists

Melbourne looks great as a ruined tropical mega shanty town. This must be the first of a new genre-or it’s the wrecking of a  few old ones. Film-like, dream-like, life-like

A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists is my first published novel, released by Transit Lounge in June 2013. According to the back cover blurb:

It is 1997 in San Francisco and Simon and Sarah have been sent on a quest to see America: they must stand at least once in every 25-foot square of the country. Decades later, in an Australian city that has fallen on hard times, Caddy is camped by the Maribyrnong River, living on small change from odd jobs, ersatz vodka and memories. She’s sick of being hot, dirty, broke and alone. Caddy’s future changes shape when her friend, Ray, stumbles across some well-worn maps, including one of San Francisco, and their lives connect with those of teenagers Simon and Sarah in ways that are unexpected and profound. A meditation on happiness – where and in what place and with who we can find our centre, a perceptive vision of where our world is headed, and a testament to the power of memory and imagination.

Dave Graney reckoned he ‘thoroughly loved this  book. I know so much more about the present and the future. Melbourne looks great as a ruined tropical mega shanty town − I can’t wait. This must be the first of a new genre-or it’s the wrecking of a  few old ones. Film-like, dream-like, life-like. Funny, and moving.’

Steven Amsterdam put in writing that the novel is  ‘a free-range and funny apocalyptic time-space road trip, with James M. Cain, J. G. Ballard, and Tom Robbins all fighting for the wheel’.

There are more reviews and suchlike here, but if you’d rather judge for yourself, you can read an excerpt here.

You can buy the book in hard copy from bookshops, the publisher, or online from the exquisite independent bookshop, Readings. You can also get it for your Kindle or on Google Play (whatever that is).

A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists was shortlisted in the science fiction category for the 2013 Aurealis Awards; the winner was Max Barry’s Lexicon, which I reviewed here. It also won the Small Press Network’s ‘Most Underrated Book Award‘.