Bon and Lesley (Shaun Prescott, Giramondo)

Shaun Prescott continues his existential explorations of modern life in his second novel, which follows his 2017 debut The Town. In the opening pages of Bon and Lesley we meet Bon, a disillusioned white-collar worker who spends three hours commuting via train—the highlight of his day—from his home in the city to the regions out west. One day Bon steps off the train in the desolate mountain town of Newnes, where he wanders into the plaza and meets a peculiar local, Steven. Bon fails to return to the train station and home to the city. Instead, he bunks with Steven, and the two spend their days drinking beers, flicking through supermarket catalogues and looking for hidden paths in the nearby forest as they wait for the arrival of Steven’s brother Jack. After Jack’s arrival, the trio are joined by Lesley, another lost soul who arrives fresh off the train, and the strangers come to settle into their respective roles of mother, father and children in a makeshift family unit. The four of them forge a banal daily routine as strange things happen around them, including the ominous appearance of the so-called Colossal Man. Filled with philosophical conversations and reflections, every phrase in this novel feels freighted with meaning; each character, vacillating between boredom and agitation, is well drawn and compelling. While Bon and Lesley has much in common with The Town, Prescott extends its bleak outlook with a consideration of care, family and what our obligations to our children are as society begins to break down. Empty streets, highway petrol stations and deserted shopping centres complement surreal scenes of suffocating darkness, hulking monsters and mysterious tunnels, making for a disarming yet beautiful and profound novel that locates itself in the tradition of speculative, postmodern writers from Kobo Abe to László Krasznahorkai, with a distinctly Australian sensibility recalling Gerald Murnane and Wayne Macauley.

Kelsey Oldham is the editor of Books+Publishing.

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