Heart Cancer

Bill Leak, ABC Books. Frank thornton has a problem. A jazz afficionado, recreational drug user, man-about-town and serial womaniser who likes a drink or two, nothing has swayed him from his determined hedonism until now. Frank's not unused to dawn awakenings on park benches, beatings by angry husbands, and days lost in an alcoholic haze, but one beating too many and the appearance in his life of the lovely novelist Xin Xin, has made him wonder whether a change of direction is in order. In this darkly humorous, refreshingly honest look at the lives a group of creative, likeable but flawed urbanites, Bill Leak examines the seedy underbelly of Australian life.