Briohny Doyle

In a not-too-distant future perpetually on the brink of collapse, catastrophe is our most popular entertainment.The energy crisis has come and gone. EcoLaw is enforced by insidious cartoon panda bears and their armies of viral-marketing children. The world watches as Pitcairn Island sinks into the Pacific, wondering if this, finally, will be the end of everything. Amongst it all, Max Galleon, anxious family man and blockbuster auteur, lives a life that he cannot remember._____Max Galleon is an immersion director. Immersions involve hypnotic suggestion and sensory stimulation. His brother, Tom, becomes involved in a cult that takes hypnotics and hallucinogens. This cult is being helped by Dr Gabrielle Stern, who is investigating a new form of mass consciousness. Tom makes contact with Max, and Max becomes interested in the cult, joining them in their unified state. But something goes wrong. The cult members die, except Max, Tom, and Gabrielle. Tom is left in a coma. Gabrielle eventually dies.At some point while Tom was still in a coma, Max outsourced his memory to the cloud. This happened after the Sleeper Cult Catastrophe, as Jonas seems to believe he could see Tom in real life, yet he was born after Max's operation.Ellie Galleon, unhappy with her husband, initiates a radical therapy. She suspects something of Max and Tom's involvement with the cult, and engages a research program incorporating the digitised mind of Gabrielle. Using the ability to directly manipulate Max's memories as well as immersion technology, they generate a scenario where Tom is being treated by Gabrielle. Enlisting Max in her treatment, Gabrielle also starts an affair with Max. Once the curtain is lifted, Max is able to make peace with his past.

The Island Will Sink

What could drive a mother to do the unthinkable? Before: Emma Cormac married into a perfect life but now she's barely coping. Inside a brand new, palatial home, her three young children need more than she can give. Clem, a wilful four year old, is intent on mimicking her grandmother; the formidable matriarch Pat Cormac. Arthur is almost three and still won't speak. At least baby Robbie is perfect. He's the future of the family. So why can't Emma hold him without wanting to scream? Beyond their gleaming windows, a lake vista is evaporating. The birds have mostly disappeared, too. All over Shorehaven, the Cormac family buys up land to develop into cheap housing for people they openly scorn. After: The summers have grown even fiercer and the Cormac name doesn't mean what it used to. Arthur has taken it abroad, far from a family unable to understand him. Clem is a young artist who turns obsessively to the same dark subject. Pat doesn't even know what legacy means now. Not since the ground started sinking beneath her.

Echolalia

A wry and topical inquiry into how we respond when our cultural clock starts ticking. 'For a long time I pretended turning thirty was no big deal - but looking back, it's clear I was bat-shit na-na for a good nine months either side of that birthday.' The first of the millennials are now in their thirties. Dubbed 'the Peter Pan generation', they have been accused of delaying adult milestones. But do marriage, careers, mortgages, and babies mean the same thing today that they did 30 years ago? Briohny Doyle turned 30 without a clear idea of what her adult life should look like. A greengrocer with a graduate degree, the world she lived in didn't match the one her parents described. Her dad advised her to find a nice secure job; her best friend got married and moved to the suburbs. But she couldn't help wondering if the so-called adult milestones distract us from other measures of maturity. In a crackling mix of memoir and cultural critique, Doyle explores how societies cultivate ideas about education, work, relationships, and ageing. She interrogates the concept of adulthood through the neon buzz of pop culture and the lives of other young adults.In a rapidly-changing world, she asks- what is an adult, and how do you become one?

Searching for True Maturity in an Age of Mortgages, Marriages, and Other Adult Milestones

Adult Fantasy

When life knocks you down, have faith in Dog. After her partner and father die in quick succession, BB moves to a glamorous, condemned beachside apartment at the edge of a glittering city so memory-saturated it might be a mirage. Her plan? To rediscover the person she was before finding, and losing, the love of her life. To heal she’ll party like it’s 1999, walk her motley dog, Baby, and surrender to the simple joys of life alone by the sea. When a neighbour mistakes her for a dog trainer, and enlists her in correcting the murderous tendencies of his Doberman, BB feels close to a meaningful new life. Harnessing the tenets of Cesar Millan the dog whisperer, and other less canine-centric canons, she helps local dogs and their wealthy, oblivious owners to distinguish between the things they can and cannot change. She even takes tentative steps towards new intimacies—with safely unavailable Franz, and sultry, free-spirited Vera. But life in Balboa Bay is increasingly surreal. Baby is sending telepathic messages. A nearby prison quotes philosophers over the intercom. The other dog trainers think BB is scab labour. And somewhere on her street there's a dog that sounds like the wind. Cinematic, heart-breaking, often hilarious, Why We Are Here is a singular love story for strange days. Doyle's witty prose revels in the solace of the natural world, in conversing with writers who have lost and endured, and above all in the profound connection between a woman and her dog. I have read a lot of good books this year, but i think this is my book of the year. It touched the soul. BEN HUNTER, TELL ME WHAT TO READ - AUSTRALIA'S BIGGEST BOOK CLUB

Briohny Doyle

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