It was 1995 when Christos Tsiolkas published his debut novel Loaded, and while it mightn’t seem so long ago, in some respects it may as well have been another universe. It’s easy to fool ourselves that the past is just like us only with different tech and music, but whole modes of thinking have come and gone since then.
Ari is a young Greek Australian gay guy (although he’d reject almost all those identifiers) with too much energy and nowhere satisfying to put it. In a single summer’s day, he traverses the streets of Melbourne, trying to avoid familial pressures while getting high on drugs and anonymous sex. His nihilism – that very 90s middle finger to corporatisation and convention – is his only instrument, and if he uses it bluntly and to his own detriment, he is at least furiously committed. Tsiolkas managed to make his protagonist simultaneously frightening and soulful, an emblem of rage and resistance who’s also terribly exposed and vulnerable.
