When Steven crosses the imaginary line between university and the real world, he decides he’d better get a job. He winds up as a postie, which he figures is just as good as anything else. When he’s not delivering mail, he drinks with his mates, goes to see his new friend Wayne presenting performance poetry and draws comic strips for his friend Gina’s zine. Together he and Gina go undercover to get rid of bad punctuation and to locate the guy who puts cool red stckers all over the city.
Complications enter Steven’s life in two forms – a doberman he calls Satan and a girl called Emma. Satan torments him as he tries to complete his mail deliveries, until he dies suddenly and mysteriously. Emma torments him other ways. She is Stevene’s first older woman and also the first girl he’s had to chase.
It also seems Emma’s getting in the way of Steven’s friendship with Gina. Will he have to choose between friendship and sex?
Man Bites Dog is a comic and quirky urban detective novel about life, love and responsibility. It seems especially likely to appeal to young twenty somethings living in Melbourne, who may well recognise themselves in some of the vast range of characters.
Quirky.
Man Bites Dog, by Adam Ford
Allen & Unwin, 2003