Marlo

A novel of two men, love, and aching loneliness. It's the 1950s in conservative Australia, and Christopher, a young gay man, moves to 'the City' to escape the repressive atmosphere of his tiny hometown. Once there, however, he finds that it is just as censorial and punitive, in its own way. Then Christopher meets Morgan, an Aboriginal man, and the two fall in love -- a love that breathes truth back into Christopher's stifled life. But the society around them remains rigid and unchanging, and what begins as a refuge for both men inevitably buckles under the intensity of navigating a world that wants them to refuse what they are. In reviving a time that is still so recent yet so vastly different from now, Jay Carmichael has drawn on archival material, snippets of newspaper articles, and photos to create the claustrophobic environment in which these two men lived and tried to love. Told with Carmichael's ear for sparse, poetic beauty, Marlotakes us into the heartbreaking landscape of a relationship defined as much by what is said and shared as by what has to remain unsaid, and unlived.