In Shaun Prescott’s Kafka-in-the-outback novel, a writer comes to a nowhere town to write on a book that he doesn’t seem to have much interest in or chance of finishing. Meanwhile, a giant hole to nowhere opens up in the middle of town. Things get weird.

My review of The Town was published in Rain Taxi Review of Books:

Showing up in the nameless outback town without any past or future direction, the narrator describes the place in sanded-down lines that emphasize its dullness and discontent. Chain stores and lassitude rule the place, as does the sense that everything is dwindling and collapsing. He gets a job at a Woolworth’s, finds an apartment, and plots out his book about the disappearing towns in “the Central West region of New South Wales” (a phrase whose repetition eventually brings on the type of cold chuckle one gets from a David Lynch film)…

You can read an excerpt here.