Fiction

Emotionally bonsai’d

Item: 88 Lines About 44 Women
Author: Jo Case

by Jo Case •

October 2009, no. 315

88 Lines About 44 Women by Steven Lang

Viking, $32.95 pb, 258 pp

Fiction

Emotionally bonsai’d

by Jo Case •

October 2009, no. 315

In an intriguing coincidence, three recent novels by notable male writers feature central characters who, former members of world-famous rock bands, ruminate on the mess they made of the past. The notion of faded rock stars clearly provides much scope for exploring issues of male ego, sexuality and mid-life crisis. Unlike Nick Hornby (Juliet Naked) and Nick Earls (The Story of Butterfish), Steven Lang is no ‘lad-lit’ writer, though he does delve into similar thematic territory in his second novel, 88 Lines About 44 Women.

Jo Case

Jo Case is senior writer/editor for the Wheeler Centre. Her previous roles have included editor of Readings Monthly, the newsletter for Readings Books & Music, books editor of The Big Issue, co-editor of their annual fiction edition, and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings. Her reviews, essays and opinion pieces have been published in The Age, The Australian, and The Sydney Morning Herald, and her short stories have been published in the Sleepers Almanac and Best Australian Stories. Her first book, Boomer and Me: A memoir of motherhood, and Asperger’s, was published by Hardie Grant in Australia (April 2013).