A depressing book about dull people who are constantly making bad choices. The writing was not good enough to make up for the lack of plot. ( )

Having known the woman the lead female character is based on, I could not but read "Praise". The rambling story focusses on an unemployed man drinking and taking drugs while living in a particularly dodgy share place. He meets a women (the one I refer to above) and the get it on. How they do so is set out by McGahan in ways that made me startled to think about my friend in such a way.

Not much more happens in the book besides drinking, smoking and drug taking (eczema gets scratched but it's not a huge plot point) but McGahan writes well and evokes early nineties Australian suburbia almost perfectly. ( )

wow flashbacks! i left school during the recession, around the time this novel was written, and dropped out of an arts degree after a couple of years. i had forgotten what a grey time it was, nearly everyone was on the dole, working shitty jobs, all of that. ( )