Cairo by Chris Womersley ~ Abbey's Bookseller Pick

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- When Tom escapes the suffocating dullness of the small Victorian town where he has grown up and moves into the 'Cairo' apartment building in Melbourne's bohemian Fitzroy he feels that at last his real life is beginning.

The streets are alive with promise, the cafes and pubs filled with interesting people. Instead of enrolling at the University he feels his education would be better here, amongst the artists, the free thinkers that inhabit the suburb and indeed his own apartment building.

He has soon met Max and his wife, the desirable and lovely Sally. Alcoholic James too, and the desperate heroin users Greta and Edward in their vast warehouse, painters both.

Life is good, an endless round of drinks, parties, a little work washing up in a cafe. But then Tom gets involved, not against his will, in a scheme to steal a famous and controversial painting from the State Art Gallery.

This is a wonderfully compelling story, based, I'm told on a true theft. The atmosphere of Fitzroy is captured with great skill and the characters and their foibles are real. A book to read in a couple of intense sittings.

~ Peter Smith (Author of the bestselling children's book, Monsieur Albert Rides to Glory)


You can listen online to Chris Womersley discuss his novel with Daniel Browning here on ABC Books and Arts Daily.

Cairo
Chris Womersley

Buy this book at Abbey's (131 York Street Sydney) ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers