AustLit

'Sydney, 1984: when 20-year-old Wallace Newman is awarded an arts grant he says goodbye to his small country town and heads to the coast to paint pictures of mermaids. Here he books into Rafferty's Private Hotel by the sea and walks into the lives of a ramshackle cast of characters, led by the indomitable landlady, Pru Rafferty. Wallace quickly discovers that the closer he gets to the water the more elusive his mermaids become. Failing to arouse his muse, he pursues his big brother Stacey, who packed his bags of wigs, high heels and frocks, and left the family home a year before. Now living in Newtown with his boyfriend, Miron, Stacey is in the final stages of a program for sexual reassignment. He needs a big favour. When the money from the arts grant funds Stacey's sex change, the search for 'true art' becomes the discovery of the 'true self', and Wallace realises he has entered a world that is filled with the unexpected.'

(Source: Hodder Headline Australia website, http://www.hha.com.au/books/0733618944.html)
Sighted: 07/03/2005