‘Going Out Backwards’, by Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen.
Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen
Hybrid, $26.95.

Kingsley Amis and his repulsive hero “Lucky” Jim Dixon have a great deal to answer for, not least an enduring strain of fiction writing devoted to charmless, sexist, self-indulgent, academic anti-heroes.

GOING OUT BACKWARDS belongs in this tradition, the fifth of historian Ross Fitzgerald’s books featuring the hapless Grafton Everest, with this one co-written by actor and writer Ian McFadyen.

Grafton is, as ever, preoccupied with his own appetites. He’s obsessed by his penis, which after prostate surgery isn’t behaving well, and is also perennially hungry. That he has accidentally become a senator and must reluctantly travel to Canberra from time to time is something he regards as a terrible nuisance.

On the bright side, the book features several gutsy female characters and is redeemed by some genuinely funny moments of good satire.

Kerry Goldsworthy, “In Short Fiction”, The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald, December 5-6 2015,
Spectrum p 34.