How do you satirise a self-satirising society? Jordan Prosser gives it a go
Forgive me.
It is utterly appalling that anyone should have to read a book review that begins like this.
It really is.
But there is just no shying away from the fact that Abby Horne, the 30-something protagonist of Jordan Prosser’s latest novel Blue Giant , desperately needs a good hangover shit.
It has been weeks since she last had a bowel movement and there are only so many bottles of Yellowtail Cabernet Sauvignon a tactless, crude, self-absorbed millennial can drink each night before the Riverina-rich tannins start leeching upwards into the decision-making part of her brain, convincing her she ought to take the task of saving humankind into her own hands.
Review: Blue Giant by Jordan Prosser (UQP) Blue Giant is a satire.
A commentary on 21st-century decadence in all its stinky, bloated, gaseous guises.
It is the sort of book Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Chuck Palahniuk might have co-written if they had been living next door to Martin Amis in a Fitzroy sharehouse owned by Thomas Pynchon ’s twice-removed Australian cousin, during the most recent Victorian bushfires.
A “deranged love letter to a generation torn between helplessness and selfishness”, as the blurb on the back cover so cutely puts it.
The novel is funny, foreboding and outlandish.
But only insofar as the meme-saturated world we live in is funny, foreboding and outlandish.
If you were not simultaneously amused and horrified by the sight of Jeff Bezos arriving back from space in a pair of cowboy boots emblazoned with the words “ Gradatim Ferociter ” (“step by step, ferociously”), or Elon Musk slashing governmental profligacy in half with a punk-studded chainsaw gifted to him by the Argentine president, or hordes of fangirls pledging their support via TikTok to accused murderer Luigi Mangione, this may not be the romp for you.
A reality TV Mars trip The plot starts out simply and plausibly enough.
Norwegian tech billionaire Tor Skovgaard is seeking participants for a one-way flight to Mars.
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