I recently finished ‘The Fur’ by Nathan Hobby, a young west ozzie who has done pretty well for himself by winning the TAG Hungerford lit prize.

In a past life I was an English teacher and aspiring writer (may still get it done one day…) so I am always keen to read the work of others, particularly those whose spirituality is given expression in their work. I never been much for classics and even less for trash, but I think I can detect decent writing from crap. Hobby’s stuff is definitely in the decent category, but certainly not in the same league as Winton – not yet.

Its probably a bit of an unfair comparison, but having just read Winton’s latest book, and seeing him as the guru of writing he is my benchmark! I was partly drawn to reading The Fur because of an interview in the Baptist Advocate (West Aus Newspaper) which discussed his work. It spoke of him originating from the south west town of Collie and being a member of Collie Baptist – a fairly conservative church if I hear right.

As a novel its a story of West Aus when it has been overrun by a mould like substance which he calls ‘fur’. The west aussies are quarantined from the rest of the country and also from some of their wealthy Western suburb neighbours (who are referred to thru-out as ‘the wealth’.) The main character is Michael whose mum gets killed by the fur when it wipes out her internals – nice…

Michael is a young guy who is just finishing year 12, moving to Perth to Uni, wanting to be a writer and also exploring his faith and sexuality. I liked the depiction of Michael as he moved from died in the wool fundamentalist to a more astute thinker and as he came to grips with the greying of the world.

It reads very autobiographical – kinda like Hobby was keeping a journal as he went thru year 12 and just wrote down what happened. That said I’m sure he has used his own experience to shape a character without it being him completely.

I probably wouldn’t have picked it up had I not shared some common ground as a recovering fundamentalist, but I’ll be interested to see what else he puts out. Its worth a read if you are interested in local talent.