Merciless Gods

Again and again he asks his readers to contemplate what it means to be Australian, what it means to be a migrant Australian, what it means to be a migrant man living in Australia, what it means to be a migrant gay man living in Australia, and I'm always newly exhilarated returning to those questions because Tsiolkas does tension well. In 'Jessica Lange in Frances' there is a graphic sex scene, and if you are at all familiar with Tsiolkas's work that would not come as any big surprise, but this scene is literally turned into a kind of poetry, as Tsiolkas adds in line breaks, creating a breathlessness of the moment: ...I stroked his hair, his face, and we were kissing and his mouth was harsh, not a girl's mouth, and his body was hard as it pressed against me, covering me, but the skin was just so soft, like touching the underneath of bark and I thought a few times, as we were making love, that fuck, it's a man, this is a man but our bodies worked together, and I liked him coming all over me, groaning and swearing loudly, repeating oh man oh man oh man and as I was coming I had my eyes closed but I was digging my mouth into his neck and I had to stop myself screaming, so I bit into him, because what I wanted to scream was something about love. By delving into these 'unconditional love-based' relationships and boldly showing that there can be real, deep-seated anger, even a complicated form of hatred at the core of them, Tsiolkas shows that no relationship is immune to scrutiny.