Praise

This remarkable novel from a young writer of exceptional talent won the prestigious Vogel Award as the best Australian first novel of 1991. Praise is a stunningly frank and darkly humorous story about being young in a world where drugs and alcohol dominate, where sex scalds and soothes, where welfare is an easier alternative than working, where survival means taking nothing and no one too seriously. Gordon is a young man whose libido is awakened only to leave him emotionally torn between the woman who has his body and the woman to whom he'd give his soul. Andrew McGahan allows these characters to conduct their mating dance to a tune performed with mordant humor. This is an astonishingly honest story about male sexuality - including the fears and the misogny as well as the possibilities.