Down the Hume

by Peter Polites

A confronting and powerful novel from an exciting new voice - for lovers of Christos Tsiolkas (LOADED) and Luke Davies (CANDY).

'He touched my face. When his hand went along my bruised top lip and my almost broken nose, I winced from the pain. His fist went into a deep denim pocket. Pulled out a Syrinapx bottle, twisted the cap off and handed me two light blue pills.'

How did Bucky get here? A series of accidents. A tragic love for a violent man. An addiction to painkillers he can't seem to kick. An unlikely friendship with an ageing patient.

Drugs, memories and the objects of his desire are colluding against Bucky. And when it hits him. Bam. A ton of bricks ...

The shadowy places of Western Sydney can be lit up with the hope of love, but no streetlight can illuminate like obsession.

A novel of addiction, secrets and misplaced love, this is an Australian debut not to be missed.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Noir

272 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2017

Reviews

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In five words: gritty, Sydney, Greek, gay, addiction. The writing had a beautiful and raw energy which I loved. He will be compared to Tsiolkas, Toltz and Davies but he stands alone and is definitely doing something different. Loved it. Exciting stuff. This is how you style prose.

[Ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My interview with Peter Polites is up now on the Guardian.

[Brett Jobling · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a lot like reading Christos Tsiolkas - a story populated by characters stripped of any virtues or redeeming qualities. A main character narrator who is just as lacking in virtue as any the characters in his story, and yet he still manages to sound like he is passing judgement on all of them. Aside from depicting a bleak landscape of racial tension, homophobia, drug addiction in an economic and cultural wasteland, there is a flimsy sub-plot of deception and swindle that is sparsely hinted at throughout the novel and conveniently wrapped up in the last few pages.
The writing has a certain brutality to it, and I've no doubt characters like these do exist, but I couldn't escape the feeling that the main character was portraying himself as a victim of every crappy thing that was dealt to him.
I started out with three stars but on reflection... two.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bleak, energetic and angry. Not sure if I 'enjoyed' reading it, but it packed a punch.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a fun read. The novel, I mean. This review may be a fun read depending on how low your humour threshold is, but the novel definitely isn't, in much the same way that Christos Tsiolkas' The Jesus Man isn't. That book sent me into a weeks-long depression after reading it, because I'd spent so much time in the company of thoroughly unlikeable characters. Same thing here.

The characters in Peter Polites' debut are thoroughly unlikeable. (Except for the mother figure who earns pin money from predictions: she's awesome in a terrible-kneed kind of way.) But the bulk of the people covered here, from Nice Arms Pete to his pliant narrator fucktoy Bux, are not nice.

That's kind of the point, though, as this is a novel that speaks of a Sydney that you won't see on a postcard, unless some hipster starts ironically flogging Westfields Of The West memento snaps, in that whole "I Climbed Mt Druitt" way. It's a novel about the west of Sydney, and speaks to and about the non-Anglo population, usually an afterthought in still mostly-white Australia. Throw in addiction, shitty jobs, domestic violence and the vicissitudes of both being gay and being "ethnic" in the wider world, and you've got something a long way from white sails and Hoges chucking one on the barbie for you.

There is dignity in doing a shit job well.

I mentioned Tsiolkas in the opening lines here because that's who – lazily, really – I've seen Polites compared to. True, that author's Loaded (filmed as Head On) is the book usually mentioned as it too discusses gay life, Greek life and drugs. But I feel that the two authors are linked less by their subject matter and more by their desire to accurately plumb awfulness in a way that creates discomfort in the reader, but not to the point of giving up entirely. No matter how bad stuff got in here, I didn't feel like chucking in the towel. Think of it like a Gaspar Noe film you read: you know there's a lot of bad shit going on in here, but turning away is more difficult than pushing on.

Not that it's a slog. Far from it. I admit, perhaps tourism fuelled my interest, but I found I got through this book pretty quickly: the kinetic energy of the piece is enormous. Violence forms a large part of the proceedings, even if not being specifically enacted. There's the seeming calm – and coercive control – of drugs. Place names skip by with the expectation that the reader will know them (or know of them) and keep up. Greek elbows its way into the text, both in terms of the quirks of an old Greek's adoption of English (some of these fuckers can swear) and the language itself, keeping the reader on their toes.

As their eyes cloud with cataracts they sing in unison from their nursing home beds: Εχουμε γεραση στην ξενιτία. We have become old in a foreign land. But there are enough people like me here that have the same flags in common.

(I'm just a skip, but I found Google Translate's photo mode a great help here. If nothing else, I've learned to be more profane on an international level.)

I must admit, I have a lot of time for this book because it speaks about places near where I used to live. As an ex-Sydneysider, it was an excellent, non-rosy reminder of places I'd been and things I've seen. It creates a more compelling portrait, for me, of the place than the sort of things Tourism NSW would like to show you, but I suppose that's more the result of my spending years in a shitty flat in Canterbury than it is anything else.

A group of hipsters was walking down the footpath towards me. As they passed each shop they looked in. Anthropologist gaze over κουραβιέδες in the zαχορόπλαστιο. Looked in at the Chinese couple running the newsagency. Examined young Greeks drinking Nescafé frappés. The hipsters wore high-waisted jeans. Distressed denim. Washed and faded collared shirts, buttons done all the way up. Their clothes made me realise that being a hipster meant paying a lot to look poor.

The book could be filed next to your noir tomes pretty easily. There's not dames in big hats (dudes in devil-red Commodores will have to suffice) but that same grimness of spirit, that tendency towards the easy way, is present here. The story is destined to go down, as stories of addiction often do, though the author leavens the slide with some wistful looks into other characters' pasts.

I don't think the writer is quite as successful in sticking the landing as he might've been, but the portraiture on display is enthralling enough to paper over any narrative flaws.

I really look forward to reading more of Peter Polites' work. I'll need a bit of a breather after this, but I expect the evisceration to continue.

[Anna Baillie-Karas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A queer, working class story told with vim & no pretence. Bucky ris a young man finding his way in Western Sydney - with Greek parents, a controlling boyfriend & a job in aged care. The voice is strong: Bucky is raw & unvarnished. It’s episodic but the writing propels you along & the story feels urgent & true. This stood out for me - it’s unlike anything I’ve read; the relationships with his parents & boyfriend are spot on & the grittiness (lots of scenes with sex and drugs) is true to the character. Highly recommend.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great debut novel - challenging, confronting, humorous and so much more, this novel reminded me of both Luke Carmen and Christos Tsiolkas in it's style and subject matter.

Told in short episodic sections this is the story of a guy of greek heritage and his relationships with family, lovers and drugs. The story is not all easy reading, but is compelling and realistic and makes you want to continue reading.

I am really looking forward to reading what this author next publishes.

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

My generous response to this book would be: if you have a protagonist who can't write, don't make them the narrator of your book. The prose in this novel is just ugly. Lots of sentences are ungrammatical, usually because they're missing a subject. Words are used incorrectly and many of the metaphors are just bad (a bus has never slithered through an industrial estate in the history of buses and industrial estates). Bux, the narrator, is narrow-minded, petty and charmless. It's never quite clear why I should choose to spend time with him. Beyond this, the story is fine, the setting fine and the dialogue ok, although it's hard to be entirely sure because some of it is in Greek. I didn't bother to translate the greek sentences. The characterisation is weak; I never understood why Bux does what he does. The actions of the other characters are mostly unmotivated, although I didn't have much reason to ponder on them anyway.

My ungenerous response to this book would be: if you can't write, don't become a novelist. I suspect that Polites didn't choose an ugly narrative voice, but that he has no ear. There were sentences and metaphors that I just can't believe someone who values good writing would leave in a final draft.

The comparisons with Loaded are apt - I also didn't enjoy that due to its unlikeable first person narrator and ugly prose. The great gay Greek Australian novel is still yet to be written, as is the great gay Australian novel.

[Zora · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a hesitant start (mine), this book really got under my skin. There is real art here in how Polities draws out mood and feeling from the seemingly ordinary and sometimes ugly spaces Bux moves through and the people he encounters, whether they be his mum, old or new lovers or an ingratiating neighbour out to bag herself a gay best friend. Bux's life as captured here was constantly on the verge of or in the midst of either unravelling entirely or coming good - with medical centre waiting rooms, RSL bistros, the car park of the local gay beat or the Oxford street dance floor providing not so much back drops as stages on which to properly enact the despair, joy and banality of his existence.

[Sean Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This will invite inevitable comparisons to Christos Tsiolakis, and they're pretty apt as they're the same kind of immoral, drug-fucked, abusive sociopaths you would never want to come across in your life. This 'gritty' kind of style sometimes makes me feel like it is a latent act of self homophobia - except this is a debut novel and all of Tsiolakis' novels have self hating gays perpetuating every stereotype and feeding directly into Fred Niles' view of how all gays 'must' be.

NB: I am not saying that there aren't gay people like this - but this sudden resurgence of a trope in gay fiction makes it almost seem like we're going back to the early days of pulp fiction, where all gay characters must suffer and be eternally damned for daring to live their lives.

[Lou Grimm · Rating 5 out of 5]

What grabbed me first about this book was the almost rambling style in which it's written: it didn't seem to have structure, or follow any 'rules of writing', but without being able to explain why, I was compelled to keep reading to see where the story was taking me.

The opening pages are about people in Bux's life, with nothing about Bux himself, not even his name, but I somehow learnt more about him this way.

Bux's disconnection from himself comes alive through passive voice, through lists of actions that make up his day:

Had to put on uniform of scrubs before I started work. Straight into the change room. Almost slipped on shiny powder blue tiles. Put my bag next to the porcelain white toilet that had a plastic black toilet seat. Took off jeans and T-shirt, threw them into the corner next to the open shower.

On the surface, this story is about the eternal search for happiness no matter who you are, but with the added spice of being gay.

At its deeper level, it's about life in the burbs. Of living in one of the most glamorous cities in the world, but not. That unique combination of utter remoteness and practically-the-capital-of-Australia that is western Sydney.

Halfway through our meal we were interrupted by this young Leb chick. She yelled out my mother's name three times as she walked past. She was a tall one. Long hair that was straightened. Kept herself well. Wore a Henleys singlet and jeans but held a real Louis Vuitton bag, big enough to fit two severed heads in.

And at it's deepest it's the entrenched hopelessness a person can feel when co-dependence and enabling is all around.

Your position was just living, living was limited joy, was what I understood from her.

Polites greatest strength may be in his ability to paint vivid pictures with minimal exposition. There should be more of this in Australian writing: you know who we are; we don't need to explain ourselves or subvert our culture.

I admit I was lost in the local references and customs, especially the Greek words, but never dangerously so. It added to my joy that some things got to stay secret from me, an outsider, an intruder.

One of my favourite concepts was that of Bux's vivid and self-flagellating imagination about what was happening around him, about possible outcomes to actions. Come on - we all do it! Bux is just being honest about it.

And oh the ending! The foreshadowing is subtle, only obvious in hindsight. That's all I'm going to spoil about it.

I could not put this down (yes, I've said it before but it's true!), even reading while walking to the shops.

Want to understand western Sydney? Read this. Want to understand the human geography that is the Greek diaspora? Read this. Want a cracking good read? You got it - read this.

[Regina Andreassen]

2.5 stars (just average) Down The Hume is Peter Polites’ debut novel, which, I finished reading but I didn't fully enjoy, this even though the proposed story has great potential. It is evident that Peter Polites is still developing his storytelling skills; the plot lacks cohesiveness but as urban fiction it is an acceptable work.

Down the Hume is raw, it can be brutal; but at the same time it lacks subtlety and sophistication. Initially, I was very engaged but as the story progressed I started losing interest; but overall it lacks a strong plot. Almost all characters need further development, some are mere caricatures and superfluous to the story, which is unnecessarily contrived.

Overall, Down the Hume is an acceptable debut novel which would have benefited from additional editing. I started reading it for a second time and I realised that although I finished reading it the first time; it doesn’t work as a re-read, I remember finding it more interesting the first time.

I will be dropping the copy in one of our street libraries. I am sure other people will appreciate its plot.

[James Whitmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange novel, putting new and challenging ideas down on the page that I've barely read before. Addiction, race, class, ancestry and sexuality, all woven into a compellingly paranoid plot. The author writes beautifully about desire and longing, and perfectly captures the sleezy side of being gay (gym culture and body obsession particularly). There's one brilliant chapter that hilariously skewers class and taste in gay cliques that was too real. It's not always perfect - style occasionally triumphs - but it is always exciting and it kept my heart racing the whole time.

[Donna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read 4 pages and couldn't read any more. It was strange, not well written and weird!

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, but not enough to give it more than three stars. It's a good thing it was relatively short and the type face was large so I made good progress, because I think it might have started to irritate me.
The style is unusual. Sentences are erratic, short and sometimes incomplete. Yet once I settled into it, I found it complemented the fairly gritty and confronting story.
The story of a young Greek Australian man's struggles with various addictions - substance, sexual and social - is unpleasant, but oddly entertaining. There are deeper themes of culture, ageing and betrayal, but in the context of the story, these are all the consequences of addiction.
A good Australian book, with interesting characters and a good atmosphere. Just not much fun and a tad depressing.
I need a good Alexander McCall Smith novel now to cheer me up.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memorable piece of narrative that is honest and revealing, a window to the gritty side of Sydney.

[Daniel Mitterdorfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic journey around the badlands of Western Sydney, through the eyes of a young gay man trying to make sense of his lot in life. There’s a little bit of Bux in us all.

[Shallowreader VaVeros · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not a slow reader but I got so infuriated by this book that I kept rage-quitting it. It took me 2 weeks to finish it. Let's just say that Greek-druggie-Mama's-boy-has-issues fiction shits me to tears. Setting wise - I live metres from the Hume. It is accurate. And relationship wise - unsurprising for noir, people being horrible to each other in the name of sex and affection. And yes, I understand, that Queer Greek-Australian Suburban Noir fic is supposed to be gritty and all about the underbelly of life. However, there was an annoying undercurrent of "Wogs out of Work" (a predominately Southern European-Australian "comedy" show from the 80s for the non Oz readers) with the constant reference to "Wogboys" and "Skips" and it just made me want to shake the character and tell him to grow up and that maybe he wasn't liked because he was a shitty human being and not because of his cultural background. The tipping point for me was nostalgia for quiet libraries and the derision with which the character regards current library spaces as being "e-info spaces of nonsense". Digital literacies FTW, thank you very much.

And to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, publishing is so pale that Greek is the diversity story, FFS.

If you want excellent Sydney set fiction - this book is for you. If you like noir - this book is for you. I don't mind noir. But I did mind this book.

[William Freeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled with this book the author was very angry about life and quite cynical. For me another major problem was the very in depth knowledge and intimacy of Sydney's western suburbs it becomes overwhelming it you are unfamiliar with them. Through the twist ending which I just couldn't believe the idea was good but the delivery was very flat.

[Kieran Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong debut novel from Polites. Captures so well the life of a gay man in Western Sydney, strongly invoking the feel of the area and hurtling towards its tragic ending. The end feels a bit contrived but doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a very good piece of fiction and an important chronicle of life in a part of Sydney so often spoken about but so rarely written about in this way.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

The short chapters and clipped prose give this story a punchy and propulsive energy. Brimming with anger, desperation and paranoia but also blackly funny with endearing moments of humanity. The abrupt ending was a disappointment but an otherwise fantastic book.

[Kowther Qashou · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, wasn't really my thing.

[Karen McEwen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Confronting, disturbing. May be a reflection of a particular migrant gay experience but it was only completed due to an obligation to a book club.

[Frankie · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF

It’s not that I hated it, I just had no idea what was going on, also it had no tone or tenor I could get a handle on.

[Bec · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about Bux, or Lambros or Bucky, depending on who he is talking to. Bux lives in Sydney, but not near the glittering water. Bux lives in the west, a hot place filled with hotted up cars & ethinc foods, where people from the other side of the city come on foodie tours- taste Korea to Lebanon in 15 minutes- where Bux is just trying to get by.
He has a shitty job, shitty boyfriends & a fraught relationship with his Baba. Bux is Greek, & his Greekness defines him as much as his sexuality. I liked Bux, he reminded me of me in some ways. He tries, doesn't get very far but he does try. He tries to get the drugs he needs to make it through the day & this leads to his ultimate downfall.
I will admit I got a bit confused by the crossing over relationships, Telly is a childhood friend who is also mates with Nice-Arms-Pete. It doesn't matter though, the essential story is clear enough.
I was curious to read this book as the Hume used to run down the end of my street, & I wondered if reading it would bring back memories. Kind of, but when I lived in Bankstown I didn't really notice the hijabs & I don't remember ever going to Belmore, where Bux lives. I don't know much about gay sex, but I know a little bit more now. The genre is noir, but this has more hope than the average noir. Well, it has no hope, like my life, which is probably why I like it.

[Rach Denholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming of age in Melbourne in the 80's when St Kilda was racy and lively, I thought I was open-minded and pretty much seen it all but this was kick-in-the-guts confronting. The Greekness, the maleness, the pure sexness, addiction, theft, rape and assult... It's the life of hard knocks.
Being female, having female friends, I've conversed with many women who've experienced sexual violence and assult, but reading poignant male to male sexual encounters and assult was so different and caused me to realise how differently I perceive the power dynamics between genders.

I almost could not finish this. Incredibly powerful, an essential voice in the dynamic of the big city life. It may not be what we like to read, but we need to hear the voice. To understand, to be real, and to feel compassion lest we walk past 'that person' on the street and feel afraid, or not for love or money, superior.

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gritty, tough yet full of heart, strut down familiar Western Sydney streets - of racial diversity, edgy violence and tense moments, sex, drugs and food references, a bucket of cultural melting pots.

Bux has an addiction to painkillers, to beautiful men who abandon him, and a soft spot for an old man with dementia and a lost love, and his mother. He roams the moody streets of Birrong, Bankstown, and Carramar, searching for meaning and answers.

Working in a nursing home, dropping in to see his mother, spotting old Greek groups bringing up memories from his childhood, and those told to him of the home country. The experience of the local diaspora is alive.

A story of a young gay man, wandering through the suburbs, trying to find his place. A book alive with reality.

[Jackie McMillan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Down the Hume is situated in Western Sydney. It labours this point with overblown descriptors: “I had that Western Sydney patois that divides us two like the M5.” Despite being familiar with Australian gay literature, in places I found this book misogynistic, particularly in the author’s withering descriptions of women. Mostly I found it bleak - down-trodden, dog eat dog living, in a haze of downers and gay sex. Can’t say I enjoyed reading this book. Maybe it would work if I were Greek, and understood the constant untranslated phrases, rather than just a female Skip who happened to grow up in Bankstown.

[Darcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book! Polites created an engrossing and evocative mood and I appreciated the writing reflected the main characters mental state and personality. I thought the book had realistic feeling characters and environments, and it was intense and gritty. It was pretty bleak though and could have been structured better to support the ending. I would recommend it, but perhaps only to read once. I enjoyed it (don’t know if enjoyed is quite the right word lol) but I don’t think I would want to read it again, at least not for a time.

[Bina Bhattacharya · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's so much to enjoy about this gay noir set in Western Sydney. From the painful insights about gay culture - its not-so-casual racism and shallowness - to its observations about the unspoken class and race tensions that shape our city's geography. But the cleverest thing about the book is that it tricks you into thinking it's a loose rambling set of musings, before spectacularly bringing it all together in the final act.

Bold, gritty and laden with irony, and most importantly, gloriously aware of its own sleaze.