In this stunning sequel to Educating Nicolas, Tom Fisher does it again; probing in his inimical way beneath appearances to explore underlying realities in the lives of Australian boys.

Highly erotic yet at once intensely heart-moving, A Somewhat Different Life traces the career of Jim Harris, a social historian afflicted with a lone, detached writer’s mind and a kind heart, from his own rough bush childhood in the remote inland, through the loss of virginity of his soul-friend Lauro; unknowing heir to a minor Italian castle, then in turn the hippy indigo child Bhavah, and finally the lost part-Aboriginal ward Daniel.

Against a background of mothers, of women supportive and scorned, and of the moralising, psycho-analytical state bureaucracy opposing his point of view, the reader is left to wonder once more who is sane and who is not.