A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz Penguin, HK$128
Until Aravind Adiga and his White Tiger waltzed off with last year's Man Booker Prize, Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole was tipped to win, which was no minor achievement. Not only is this Toltz's debut, it clocks in at more than 700 pages and is funny, which few prize winners are. Toltz makes the reader laugh by drawing odd connections. 'Paris - perfect city to be lonely and miserable in. And Rome? Full of sexual predators who live with their mothers ... Spain? Streets smell like socks fried in urine.' Why socks, you wonder, even as you sense a peculiar truth. The plot is suitably offbeat. Jasper Dean is in prison and after four years spent in a coma is ready to go insane: 'There are no distractions here ... to avoid catastrophic introspection.' What Jasper is introspective about is his lunatic father, who in turn tells ribald stories about how to commit a decent crime, about running Australia into the ground and about his brother Terry. One-liners abound: '... depression is the number-two disease in the world, behind internet porn eye strain.' You have to be pretty amazing to write stories as wild and enjoyably unkempt as this, and Toltz is.