Shearsman Books

Paperback, 688pp, 9x6ins, £19.95 / $35
ISBN 9781905700967

Centered on Australian suburbia in the 60s, 70s and 80s The Lovemakers explores the inner and outer tensions of families, friendships and society whilst charting the sleaze, mayhem and humanity that go to make a nation's life. Taking the triangle of Barb, her husband Roger and her lover Neil for its emotional heart the work then explodes into the lives of Kevin the heroin czar, Stubbsy the entrepreneur, Gibbo the comedian and Sophie, Hannah and Carrie, three women each set on making her way in the world. Meanwhile, through a life and times consumed by melodrama and farce, money and nothing, ambles Kim Lacey: drug importer, merchant banker, a two-faced charmer forever on the approximate make.

The Lovemakers is the crowning achievement of a career that has been stubbornly original in the poetic forms that it employs, supple in language, astringent in thought. [Peter Pierce The Bulletin]

…The Lovemakers reclaims a space for a distinctly narrative poetic, able and willing to grapple at length with contemporary issues and morality. All that remains to complete this poet's arduous journey is the embrace of Australian readers. Switch off your televisions for a moment, people. [Mark Svendsen The Courier Mail]

But The Lovemakers isn't just about overdoing it: it performs overdoing it. Wearne's aesthetic is one of excess, of conspicuous idiosyncrasy. Part of its excessiveness and oddity is its oxymoronic status. Wearne's books are simultaneously poetic and prosy, realistic and outré, stylistically heterogeneous and tonally homogenous. [David McCooey Australian Book Review ]

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