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'The virtuoso new novel from the author of the Booker-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole.
'Nobody was ever thinking about me. Now that I’m dead, I dwell on this kind of thing a lot.'
'Angus Mooney is in a dark place: the afterlife. His days are spent in aching embarrassment; god, religion, the supernatural – he was wrong about everything. He longs for his audacious, fiery wife, Gracie, but can only watch from the other side as she is seduced by his killer, who has stepped seamlessly into Mooney’s shoes.
'Meanwhile, life after death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Another pandemic is sweeping the globe; Mooney’s new home is filling up fast, resources are scarce, infrastructure is crumbling, and he has to share an increasingly cramped existence with a group of people still traumatised by their own deaths. And although he should know better, he remains in the grip of the same fear as when he was alive: the opinions of others.
'Narrated with the ironic hindsight afforded by life beyond the mortal plane, Here Goes Nothing is a razor-sharp, hilariously entertaining, insightful and moving meditation on our 21st-century world, and the intricate relationship between love and death.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Angus Mooney Is Dead
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel -
[Review] Here Goes Nothing
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 154 2022;
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel -
A Distant Brightness
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , August 2022;
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel'For Steve Toltz, everything, even death, is a joke. His third novel, Here Goes Nothing,is an afterlife satire for a disenchanted secular world. The protagonist Angus Mooney, an atheist, wakes up after being murdered to find his ‘sneering contempt for the supernatural’ confronted by evidence to the contrary. The title reveals itself as a pun: the ‘nothing’ that ‘goes’ is eternal oblivion.'(Introduction)
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Locus Looks at Books : Ian Mond
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Locus , August vol. 89 no. 2 2022; (p. 18)
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel ; Hard Places 2022 selected work short story -
What Will Survive?
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 4 June 2022; (p. 14)
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel
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Here Comes the Pandemic Fiction: Murder, Disease and Life After Death in Steve Toltz’s Here Goes Nothing
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 2 May 2022;
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel -
‘Exquisite’, ‘Extraordinary’, ‘Insightful’ : The Best Australian Books Out in May
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 2 May 2022;
— Review of Homesickness : A Memoir 2022 single work autobiography ; Bedtime Story 2022 single work autobiography ; Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel ; Sunbathing : A Novel 2022 single work novel -
Steve Toltz : Here Goes Nothing
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 7-13 May 2022;
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel -
The Quip and the Dead
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , May no. 188 2022; (p. 52-55)
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel 'STEVE TOLTZ IS AN ISOLATE of Australian literature. He has no readily traceable ancestors locally, and admirers but no imitators, perhaps because his style is too distinctive to borrow. The international inspirations he has name-checked – Jane Bowles, Clarice Lispector, Roberto Bolaño – are detectable in his work only in trace quantities, and his sensibility comes with a distinctly northern hemisphere pedigree: European modernist pessimism, as told through American comedy. Only his settings remain antipodean. He has lived overseas for many years (various European capitals, the French countryside, Park Slope and then Los Angeles), yet his novels are all set in Australian suburbia, the jurisdiction of his memory.' (Introduction) -
Posthumous Mortifications : Steve Toltz’s Exploration of Fear
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 443 2022; (p. 27)
— Review of Here Goes Nothing 2022 single work novel'What happens when we die? Human curiosity about the afterlife has inspired countless artists and storytellers from the earliest myths through to Dante and Boccaccio. More recently we’ve had Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002) and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), as well as sitcoms like Netflix’s philosophical The Good Place and Amazon’s capitalist dystopia Upload, and now Steve Toltz’s alternately bleak and bonkers take in Here Goes Nothing.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2023 longlisted Voss Literary Prize
- 2023 shortlisted Russell Prize for Humour Writing
- 2022 winner 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature — The Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize
- 2022 shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Science Fiction Division — Novel
- 2022 shortlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
