You can never guess what another person will do. You can't bank on them catching you when you fall. So they can't bank on you.
Andrew Hutchinson's Melbourne-set first novel is an abrasive and bleak creation that demands much from the reader. He portrays a drug and violence-filled world you (hopefully) don't know and characters you simply can't empathise with. But it is also a world that you can't deny or turn away from. It's a horrifying setting in which young men routinely drug and rape young women. The men are quick to violently protect each other. And the women, some of them, are complicit in the attacks against them.
The combination of money, drugs, sex and violence invites comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis but there is only a superficial similarity. Ellis' characters, even the most vile of them, always seem to have moments of doubt, moments of moral uncertainty. Not so with Hutchinson's characters. They are uniformly nihilist, cold and brutal. There is no redemption in this Melbourne and none expected. These characters are self-knowingly morally damaged and there is no punishment-to-come that threatens them or compels them to change, to be otherwise.
Hutchinson's writing is sparse but full of carefully constructed detail. This propels the narrative along so fast that you are likely to read the novel in one or two sittings. It's visceral writing. The reader feels the lurching of a car racing away from a crime scene, smells the nightclub toilet, feels the kicks to the head. Tastes the blood.
Hutchinson was mentored through the final stages of his book by Christos Tsiolkas (author of Head On and Dead Europe) and the influence is very much apparent. I suspect that the biggest criticism that Rohypnol will face is that it's nothing more than Head On for straight boys. That would be a simplistic judgement but also an understandable one - it's hard to avoid feeling that Tsiolkas deserves a co-author credit. But another author like Tsiolkas wouldn't be a bad thing. The verve and audacity that Hutchinson displays, influenced by Tsiolkas or not, is much needed.
Rohypnol is an important book. It's going to be divisive and controversial. It's going to be remembered by those who read it and judged mercilessly by those who won't but would condemn its subject matter all the same.
The combination of money, drugs, sex and violence invites comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis but there is only a superficial similarity. Ellis' characters, even the most vile of them, always seem to have moments of doubt, moments of moral uncertainty. Not so with Hutchinson's characters. They are uniformly nihilist, cold and brutal. There is no redemption in this Melbourne and none expected. These characters are self-knowingly morally damaged and there is no punishment-to-come that threatens them or compels them to change, to be otherwise.
Hutchinson's writing is sparse but full of carefully constructed detail. This propels the narrative along so fast that you are likely to read the novel in one or two sittings. It's visceral writing. The reader feels the lurching of a car racing away from a crime scene, smells the nightclub toilet, feels the kicks to the head. Tastes the blood.
Hutchinson was mentored through the final stages of his book by Christos Tsiolkas (author of Head On and Dead Europe) and the influence is very much apparent. I suspect that the biggest criticism that Rohypnol will face is that it's nothing more than Head On for straight boys. That would be a simplistic judgement but also an understandable one - it's hard to avoid feeling that Tsiolkas deserves a co-author credit. But another author like Tsiolkas wouldn't be a bad thing. The verve and audacity that Hutchinson displays, influenced by Tsiolkas or not, is much needed.
Rohypnol is an important book. It's going to be divisive and controversial. It's going to be remembered by those who read it and judged mercilessly by those who won't but would condemn its subject matter all the same.
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