I devoured Jordan Prosser’s girthy-brained debut novel, the philosophical rock and roll bender BIG TIME, when it came out in 2024.
It was my favourite read that year.
Prosser is back with his sophomore effort, BLUE GIANT, and it’s safe to say the lad is on a tear.
BLUE GIANT’s protagonist is Abby Horne, a younger millennial, who is trauma (and literally) drunk on a climate disaster related incident in her recent past. Apparent to everyone but herself, Abby is a rolling trainwreck, sliding from one half-sozzled indignity to the next, juiced up on a painful cocktail of grief and belligerent optimism.
So when a Danish tech billionaire announces he’s going to send a crew to Mars, Abby latches onto the fanciful mission as a way to make her mark in a world stuffed to breaking point with vapid over stimulation and a steady throb of terminal grief.
I’ll not delve into spoilers here – this one subverts your expectations at a clip – but the author unpicks a very specific strain of generational nihilism with empathy and care.
Abby is at once exasperating, hilarious and relatable, and as her mooted mission to Mars becomes increasingly fraught, we can’t help but empathise with even the very worst decisions she makes.
Weaving through a vividly rendered Melbourne with desperate main character energy, Abby grapples with her generational impotence, subsumed rage at the state of the world and a sense of flailing righteousness.
What else is there to do in a world like this one, teetering on the brink, where power is held by sociopaths and grifters, where every noble deed is boiled down to an engagement blip and the pricks inevitably flip a get out of gaol free card?
There’s a very likely chance this one will be one of my faves of the year.
Prosser writes with a sardonic smirk, unafraid to indulge in the Aussie penchant for scatological japes, while also rendering a bleakly humanist manifesto on the abysmal state of things here on terra firma.
Can’t wait to see what this bloke does next.