Fiction 12 Sep 2005 14:20

A Night at the Pink Poodle

A Night at the Pink Poodle
Matthew Condon

A collection of 15 loosely-connected short stories set in the Gold Coast, this book has its good and bad moments.

Icarus, the main character and narrator, is a real estate agent who specialises in selling penthouses, and eventually gets one of his own. The stories follow his adventures, fortunes and misfortunes, both in his work and (mostly) in his personal life. Some of the stories are very funny (such as the one about the shrinking island and the one about sailing), some are sad and some are just weird.

None of them ends with anything actually resembling an ending, but you can see that Icarus is maturing and changing as the book progresses. The stories probably span several months (a few years at most), and he goes from a very self-centered young penthouse salesman to a more introverted person ready to have his own family.

The Pink Poodle of the title is a real (and famous) motel in the Gold Coast, and it shows up in the last story. It seems to play an important (if not very well defined) role in it. In real life, it looks like the motel is being turned into an apartment building, though.

(this book doesn’t seem to be in print anymore and is not available anywhere online)

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