Cirrus@Austlit

'For a long time Western Sydney has been the political flash-point of the nation, but it has been absent from Australian literature. Luke Carman’s first book of fiction is about to change all that: a collection of monologues and stories which tells it how it is on Australia’s cultural frontier. His young, self-conscious but determined hero navigates his way through the complications of his divorced family, and an often perilous social world, with its Fobs, Lebbbos, Greek, Serbs, Grubby Boys and scumbag Aussies, friends and enemies. He loves Whitman and Kerouac, Leonard Cohen and Henry Rollins, is awkward with girls, and has an invisible friend called Tom. His neighbour Wessam tells him he should write a book called How to Be Gay – and now he has. Carman’s style is packed with thought and energy: it captures the voices of the street, and conveys fear and anger, beauty and affection, with a restless intensity.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Two Americans are presumed dead and nine people are trapped in a cabin after an avalanche falls in the remote Andes...

Told from five points of view, What the Ground Can't Hold follows:

Emma, an Australian faced with an impossible decision that could see her parents jailed.

Jack, a teenager obsessed with Jack Kerouac, anti-globalism and sex.

Carmen, a tango dancer whose estranged father is dying of cancer.

Pedro, the cabin manager, who's in hiding from his ex-wife.

And Wolfe, an American on a deadly family quest.

With food supplies dwindling, these unlikely companions are forced to extremes and discover they are bound by more than their surroundings – each has a secret that links them to Argentina's Dirty War.

What the Ground Can't Hold is a mesmerising debut about the ways the past closes in on the present, and shatters the foundations upon which we build our lives.' (Publisher's blurb)