AustLit

'There’s no crueler thing you can say to an actor than ‘Don’t quit your day job’. Fortunately, thanks to cover bands and theatre restaurants, Ash Flanders never needed one. But after years of glittering appearances on stages and in school gyms across the country, Ash unceremoniously finds himself seated at a computer terminal in a decidedly un-sparkly corporate office. No longer an acclaimed playwright and performer, Ash is now a legal transcriptionist—typing the words of suspected criminals who are not nearly as fascinating as TV suggested.

'As Ash painstakingly types out the narratives of petty crims, he begins to interrogate his own poor choices. That thing he did in an abandoned carpark. The visit to the horse knackery. Those people at the old folks home. All of it in service of one thing: making people laugh.

'But as his own transcript unravels, Ash realises it’s about making her laugh. His toughest audience. A heavy-drinking, chain-smoking behemoth named Heather Flanders. And her health is getting so dire it’s, well… laughable.'

Source: Griffin.