Demons (Wayne Macauley, Text)

Seven middle-aged, well-off Melburnians and the sulky teenage daughter of one of them gather in a holiday house overlooking the Great Ocean Road for a winter weekend. It’s meant to be a catch-up of old friends; a no-phones, no-TV time for eating, drinking and talking. Indeed, the whole point of the weekend is meant to be talking, using storytelling, honesty and intimacy to give the group a renewed sense of purpose in lives dogged by the humdrum 40-something struggles of work, families and relationships. But sometimes telling stories can go off in directions no-one had anticipated. Wayne Macauley’s latest novel uses the deliberately ‘small’ and rather theatrical setting of just having people in a room, talking, to ratchet up the tension. Add in a storm, a blackout, a growing pile of empty wine bottles and a shift in the rules from telling tall stories to only telling the truth, and things, inevitably, get ugly. Demons has echoes of Tsiolkas’ The Slap, and will certainly appeal to a similar readership.

Tim Coronel is a freelance editor and publishing consultant, and a former publisher and editor of Books+Publishing

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews