Since 1995, when he published Loaded, a slim but incendiary novel about twenty-four hours in the life of a young, gay, Greek man living in Melbourne, Christos Tsiolkas has been a powerful literary force. He would go on to receive high praise and perhaps even riches for The Slap (2008), a kaleidoscopic novel which would be adapted for television in Australia and the US. There has been Damascus (2019), Tsiolkas’s award-winning re-imagining of the life of St Paul and the dark and violent early days of the Christian church, as well as other novels, a short story collection, and criticism.
His is a towering presence, one that would be intimidating if the man did not have a reputation for being warm and generous.
But this reviewer can now hear Tsiolkas spitting venom: ‘Do not bring my personality into this, you fool. Do not mix my life with my art.’
So then, this latest work.
7 ½ is subtitled ‘a novel’, but how much of that is true? It concerns a Melbourne-based novelist called Christos Tsiolkas. He lives with his long-term, same-sex partner. He is in his mid-fifties. The narrative involves Christos (sometimes ‘Christo’ and sometimes ‘Chris’) taking himself to a rented holiday house on the far south coast of New South Wales in the hope of retreating from the world with all its distractions to write a new book. We see Christos writing in the house – often on the deck overlooking a manicured garden – and swimming at the beach, making meals, watching films, smoking, reading, and dreaming, which is a close cousin of the imagination, as it is of writing fiction.
The Christos of the novel makes it clear that he is telling a number of stories simultaneously, one relating to his childhood and adolescence, another about a retired gay porn star who, despite now being married to a woman and has a son, is offered a large sum of money to return to the US, the country of his birth and former profession, to have sex with an elderly gentleman who never had the opportunity to properly explore his sexuality.
In typical Tsiolkas fashion, 7 ½ is also a polemic.
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Keep reading this review at the Canberra Times, where it was published on 13 November 2021.
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 
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November 13, 2021 at 9:16+00:00Nov
robyncadwallader
Great review. Thanks. When I’ve read the novel, I’d love to find out your thoughts about how autobiographical it is (I’ve heard that Tsolkias calls it ‘metafiction’), and why he has apparently positioned himself as narrator and protagonist. I’m intrigued at how it changes and/ or helps his project.
November 13, 2021 at 9:16+00:00Nov
Nigel Featherstone
Thank you, Robyn. I haven’t heard Tsiolkas referring to the novel as metafiction, though I can see how that concept might apply. I’ve heard him saying that he doesn’t know what ‘autofiction’ means, so perhaps there’s some kind of answer in that? One of the elements of the novel that I didn’t quite get in the review is about the idea of the ‘novel’ as a project (and object, I suppose), and its place in contemporary culture. I’d love to hear what you make of his many observations about that, and his thoughts about the writing life generally.