Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

Image. Advertisement:

The Overthinkers (Lisa Portolan & Ben Cheong, Big Sky Publishing)

Four gen Zs in Sydney grapple with status, socialising and self-acceptance in the The Overthinkers by Lisa Portolan and Ben Cheong. First we are introduced to Leo, a self-deprecating gay Asian personal trainer struggling both with accepting himself and acceptance from parts of the gay community. Next is his friend Benji, another PT, who typifies the progressive, enlightened straight male in the big smoke. Benji is pining after Francesca, an ambitious girl who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings and has designs on someone else. Finally there’s Hamish, who struggles with recreational drug use but remains reliant on his wealthy family to shield him from personal responsibility. While The Overthinkers is an earnest effort to sketch out the complex, sometimes fragile, inner worlds of today’s youth, it’s mostly a light exercise (which is ironic given its title). Issues like Hamish’s drug problem and Leo’s experience with racism in the gay community don’t feel fully examined; they are nodded to but not engaged with through the kind of deeper dialogue associated with today’s self-aware generation. As Benji notes about his mother, a gender studies academic: ‘All that time spent in the field talking to the youth of today about gender, sexuality and intimacy had equipped her with terms.’ Likewise, Portolan and Cheong may have the right terms, from monogamy to heteronormativity, but rely on a limited, shorthand approach to channelling these ideas through their four 22-year-old protagonists. In its chatty, casual way, The Overthinkers tries to offer insight into the youth of 2021, but too often leaves harder issues—ones that gen Z would likely want reckoned with harder—uninterrogated.

Nathan Smith is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.

 

Category: Reviews