'Holden Sheppard’s Invisible Boys — lately in the news for its TV adaptation on Stan — is an imperfect but extremely entertaining novel that deserves its success. I argue that it is a canonically important work of Australian gay literature, a monument of eroticised and anxious masculinity belonging to a legacy including titles such as Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded and Barracuda, or Tim Winton’s Breath. I also argue it impeccably instantiates some important gay sexual archetypes, with one major omission.' (Introduction)