AustLit

Ben Wallymacher has always struggled to keep up with Francis. Friends from childhood, their lives diverge as they battle with the big questions - relationships, fathering, the limits of spontaneity, the usefulness of seventies obsessions like the 'human potential movement' - until they're drawn together again by Francis's elusive daughter, Piaf.

This ironic comic novel flits from the past to the present, weaving a tale of life's journey with some pretty interesting pit stops - geodesic domes, psychodrama and gurus, armed robbery and prison, New York and Fremantle, the Chelsea Hotel and Adele's B & B.

It's about an ordinary man trying not to make too much of a wally of himself.