This is one of the most hilarious books I've read in a while - funny and smart and full of inside jokes from the literary world. It's a collection of biographical "essays" on Australian writers who never existed, and I loved the way the stories/essays interacted with each other and how the fiction was interwoven with facts so deftly that I had to google several times to make sure the writer wasn't actually real.
It's a brilliant book right until the very end, including the index which you must not skip. And chapter three has what may be my favourite joke ever.

How to describe this ‘novel’? It is brilliantly funny satire, ostensibly sixteen biographical vignettes of fictitious literary notables in the Australian writing scene. The characters dip into each others’ stories, building up a picture of shady characters, imposters, and unsettling mysteries.

This is a very clever book. It had me laughing and cringing in approximately equal amounts. I enjoyed the links within the book and to real life but some of the wittiness just made me groan because it tried too hard and jarred. I wanted to like it more than I did.

The only thing I regret is that I probably didn't get all the references and find every Easter egg. I hesitated between 4 and 5 stars, but decided it that though very entertaining, it ultimately didn't really put a mark on me.

I must confess that I had avoided reading this as I worried it might be gimmicky - after all it's sixteen biographies of invented Australian writers. But it's satirical brilliance. You do need to know your way around the Australian literati scene and your Australian literature to get the most out of it so its appeal might be limited. But it's completely hilarious and scathing of Australian fiction and the treatment of women writers. The index was a personal highlight. So. Much. Fun.

One of the most outrageously entertaining books I've read in a long time, this is an absolute must for fans of Australian literature in particular. It's very knowing in its construction and works beautifully as a postmodern take on literary scholarship with echoes of Nabokov's Pale Fire, Malcolm Bradbury's Mensonge and Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas (both Nabokov and Bolaño are name-checked). Don't forget to read the index...