Ash is a country boy – gay, innocent, naive – who moves to Melbourne. He finds friends, a house share, a job as a dish pig, and an immediate attraction to James. He also finds he’s stumbled into a game where he doesn’t understand the rules.
Ash’s attraction to James is immediate and all-consuming. James, however, is in a relationship with Raf. These two men are not alike: James is calm and compassionate; Raf looks like Jesus and is a little dangerous. Ash’s jealousy informs his dislike and suspicion of Raf, particularly after witnessing his denigration of Booth, another partygoer. At yet another party Booth is found dead, and Ash is convinced Raf is responsible. Ash’s behaviour becomes increasingly chaotic in his pursuit of Raf. Contemporaneously, there are discordant gaps in James’s character arc. Ash discovers that Booth has a rifle hidden under his bed. The question of the proposed use of this weapon, and by whom, could be central to the action, but definitive answers are elusive. The rifle’s appearance indicates Chekhovian influences, although Vowles cleverly subverts its significance.
Ash’s name is apposite: there is a significant fire in his past. There’s also a possibility that another fire may rise from those embers, fanned by the actions of other characters.
The story has echoes of the psychological unease of Wake in Fright, and a focus on gay lifestyle reminiscent of Tsiolkas. There’s an intriguing ambiguity to the denouement, but also a circularity, where the narrative returns Ash to the sense of alienation he experienced at the novel’s beginning.
Vowles’ Our New Gods is a fresh and exciting new voice in Australian literature, and it will be interesting to see where that career leads.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’m a graduate of Central Film School, London, where I obtained a BA First Class Honours in Screenwriting.
Since then, several of my feature film scripts have placed or been a finalist in the world’s most renowned screenwriting competitions, including the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards and the Big Break Screenwriting Contest.
I’ve worked as a script reader for companies in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the Blue Cat Screenwriting Competition based in Los Angeles; I’ve been commissioned by the West Australian Youth Theatre Company to write an original play, during which I received mentorship from leading West Australian playwrights; and in 2022 I graduated from the Writing a Novel course with the Faber Writing Academy.
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