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The comparison to Mystic River is particularly apt, though it did create certain expectations of narrative structure for me, that at first disappointed when they weren’t met. But this is a quintessentially Australian and unique story, and once I settled into the stride, I was immersed, partly because of the nostalgia trip via TV shows, though the insight into a male teenage mind is unsettling. The first part is told from the perspective of Ben as a boy in 1989, where his best friend is Fab, bullied probably because of appearing ‘different’ because of his Italian heritage. In Ben’s street, a girl commits suicide, her family moves away, and a stranger moves in. Soon, Ben is mowing his lawn and being given porno mags. The weight of what is occurring is all the more suffocating for me as a reader, knowing what is happening, but Ben is unaware, still awakening to his own (healthy) sexuality. Cut to the present in part 2, and Fab is still stuck in town, trying his luck with an eBay junk business, in love with a married barmaid, with whom he seems to have a genuine connection. Then a body is found in a rubbish bin in the river. The final part is devastating in revealing the depths of human depravity and a boy’s friendship.