‘The In Between’ by Christos Tsiolkas

Fiction – paperback; Allen & Unwin; 400 pages; 2023. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Australian author Christos Tsiolkas is known for bold storytelling that is provocative, salacious and socially aware. But as he matures, so, too, does his work.

His latest novel, The In-Between, is a tender love story between two middle-aged men who have been damaged by past relationships.

Yes, it still maintains Tsiolkas’ trademark edginess and carnality, but it’s certainly softer and less risque than anything he’s written before.

I ate it up in the space of a weekend and loved its depiction of an unlikely relationship between two very different people essentially seeking the same thing: love, companionship and to be “seen” for who they are, not what they are.

Nervous date

This character-driven story begins with a nervous internet date between Perry, a translator newly repatriated from France, and Ivan, a landscape gardener who runs his own business.

Both men are in their 50s but are like chalk and cheese — one is the son of Greek immigrants, the other is the son of Serbians; one is highly educated, the other is not; one has travelled the world, the other has only ever left Australia once; one is cerebral, the other is practical; one lives in Melbourne’s inner north, the other lives in a southern bayside suburb; one has never had children, the other has an adult daughter and a grandchild.

Yet both men have something important in common — they have been damaged in love and are almost at the point of giving up on ever finding love again. Perry is still recovering from a long-time affair with a married man that went sour, while Ivan is constantly at loggerheads with his ex-wife over a past affair that ended in theft and violence.

It then charts the course of their relationship over many years in a series of sizeable chapters, each one told from a different perspective and at a different point in time so that the reader has to fill in the gaps about what might have happened in between (hence the novel’s title).

The class divide

Through the prism of the relationship, Tsiolkas examines the class divide. There’s a dinner party in chapter 3 which brings all this to the fore — and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read. The dialogue is cracking, and the tension and suspense are absolutely nerve-shredding!

The party is particularly excruciating for Perry because in introducing his new lover to his old university friends, Yasmine and Cora, he is opening himself up to their judgements (and aspersions) — and he’s not sure if he can take it.

During the first course, the conversation is “genial, curious, and does not stray into any controversial or difficult terrain”, but as the evening progresses there are moments of high tension as the guests, which include an additional heterosexual couple, discuss matters in which Ivan has next to no experience.

Perry finds he cannot settle that sense of unease. He is too aware of Ivan, who answers the questions asked of him with courtesy and calmness. Yet he conspicuously refrains from contributing to the discussion. Jed is an academic, a professor at the School of Biological Sciences at Monash Unversity. Perry is conscious of the assumption of a shared language and system of beliefs among the five at the table who have university degrees. At one point, just as Yasmine rises to take the plates away, Evelyn asks Ivan, “Where did you study?”
Perry freezes […]
“I did trade school at a horticultural college. I started my apprenticeship when I was sixteen.” Ivan takes a piece of flatbread, piles hummus onto it. “I hated high school — couldn’t wait to leave.” (p153)

Cue a pin dropping — and Perry disappearing to the bathroom so he can avoid the questioning looks and quietly swallow his own anger.

In another chapter, we learn of Ivan’s dependence on extra-curricular sex, which also casts him as an outsider, and there’s the constant hint of a violent past. But there’s no doubt that the love between Perry and Ivan is profound and life-changing.

Typically Tsiolkas

The In-Between is written in Tsiolkas’ usual unflinching style. His descriptions of sexual encounters are typically pornographic, which might come as a shock if you have not read his work before. But there’s a new vulnerability in his writing, a willingness to reveal the hunger for human connection in emotional, not just physical, terms.

He lays bare the need to be kind and gentle with one another, to accept differences, to forgive others their trespasses and to live with candour and verve.

I think this might be his best work yet.

The In-Between will be published in the UK by Atlantic in May 2024.

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Book launch in Fremantle

As reported via my Instagram account, last month I saw Christos in Fremantle. He was in conversation with local writer Holden Sheppard, who was an impressive moderator, steering the conversation in interesting directions and asking great questions.

I loved these insights:

• Tsiolkas’ father, who did not speak English, would buy him random books to read, such as Dickens, Xavier Herbert and the “wildly inappropriate” Henry Robbins because he wanted his son to have an education.
• His mother was so shell-shocked by a cinema screening of Loaded (an adaption of his debut novel renamed Head On) that she took him to a pokies pub where they both got drunk on whisky and “had the best and most important conversation of my life”.
• If you want to be a writer be “thy excellent reader” and read often and widely and out of your comfort zone.

In the signing queue afterwards, I reminded him that we had previously met at a publishers’ dinner party in London to celebrate the launch of Barracuda in 2014 and I had also seen him at the launch of Damascus in Fremantle in 2019. He remembered me and then embraced me in a giant bear hug!

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