Oli Darling has lived up to his name: the gay country boy has been the darling of Australia’s art scene. He continually sells out exhibitions … until flippant remarks on national television see him step into a cultural abyss. Overnight, his artworks become worthless. His manager, Anton, formulates a plan for Oli’s reputational restoration, involving writing a mea culpa memoir. Oli won’t be trusted to write it. That’ll be the work of Ghost – a writer hired to corral Oli’s verbal meanderings into the requisite form.
The nomination of the ghostwriter as Ghost is typical of the characterisations within the book, who are often given a simple archetypal name: Money, Paperman, etc. This focuses the narrative onto Oli and, to a lesser degree, Anton. However, much time is spent with Oli digging himself into a deep hole. The hole becomes impossibly deep, and the reader then has difficulty seeing the possibility of any redemptive qualities. An outstretched hand – should the reader be willing to offer it – may not reach. (If the author treats characters with contempt, why then should the reader care?) Ghost has greater nuance – and more involvement than first imagined – and could’ve been a more interesting central character.
Oli’s entry into art was accidental and prompted by his childhood friend and first love, Rio, who he painted in his seminal work, Daffo. Anton purchased this work (and all his others) at his art school exhibition, springboarding Oli into artistic success. It also establishes a business model for Anton, and this model becomes pivotal in the book’s denouement.
Pieper satirises the art world, but it’s often heavy-handed. Sadly, first impressions last, and Oli and the book suffer as a result.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’m an author and ABIA-winning ghostwriter of global bestsellers as well as more modest successes with my name on the cover.
My memoir, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award and the Ned Kelly Best True Crime award. It was followed in 2015 by Mistakes Were Made, a book about why you should never write a memoir.
I was co-recipient of the 2014 M Literary Award, winner of the 2015 Geoff Dean Short Story Prize, and the 2018 National Library of Australia Creative Arts Fellow for Australian Writing.
My first novel, The Toymaker, received the 2016 Christina Stead Fiction. The others are Sweetness and Light and Appreciation, which is objectively the most fun of the three.
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