The Opposite of Success

I was on page two of Eleanor Elliott Thomas’s debut novel The Opposite of Success when I laughed out loud for the first time. By page five, I was reading paragraphs aloud to my partner. I found this story about motherhood, love, friendship, and middle-management desperately relatable, and by the end of the first chapter I had a new favourite Australian author.

Council worker Lorrie is in line for a promotion that she’s not entirely sure she wants. She’s well-liked, a hard worker, and her pet project – to install community gardens on the rooftops of high rises around the city – will culminate in a fancy party hosted by noxious mining magnate Sebastian Glup that very night.

Lorrie’s best friend Alex, a nihilistic documentary maker who is working on a film about a group of eco-terrorists calling themselves the Earthlings, is determined to be in attendance; partially to interview Glup, but also because she suspects the Earthlings have something big planned for the night.

Taking place over a single day, The Opposite of Success is a firecracker of a book that crackles with quick-fire dialogue, gorgeously rendered details, and is liberally peppered throughout with precise and enjoyably unexpected similes.

Wonderfully grounded in the familiar surrounds of Melbourne and populated by characters so familiar I’m almost entirely sure I’d recognise them if I saw them walking down the street, The Opposite of Success is a wildly enjoyable book about trying to live your best life when it feels like the world is spinning inexorably towards destruction.