AsThe In-Between opens,we move with Perry as he prepares for a date,a middle-aged gay man recently single and with all the doubts and nervous energy of a younger,less experienced soul. The man he’s to meet tonight,Ivan,while upon initial inspection a little more forceful and certain of himself,has his own doubts and uncertainties. Together,they’ll start a new relationship,while both dealing with the torments and regrets of the past.
Nothing could be simpler,or more emotionally tangled. It’s a love story,and an unabashedly tender one,but populated with older,sadder figures,and given a less forgiving contemporary setting. It’s been nearly 30 years since Tsiolkas published the headlongLoaded, and while it’s cheap critical juxtaposition to compare the younger artist’s work with the old,the comparison here is unavoidable and crucial.
Both artist and his fictions have aged,taken their knocks,and returned chastened if restless. WhileThe In-Between charts the bruised romanticism and nervous negotiations of midlife relationships with hard-earned wisdom,it hasn’t entirely traded away the younger man’s embrace of the ugly,often cruel,and provocative.
Most tellingly,it feels like an exposed,vulnerable performance after the metafictional gamesmanship and nested narratives of his previous novel,the frequently excellent7½. Tsiolkas has no need for elaborate scaffolding or intricate wheels within wheels here. In one sense it’s the sparest,most unashamedly direct thing he’s ever written.
As is the case with nearly all of Tsiolkas’ work,the view is unapologetically contemporary. While many novelists struggle with a modern-day setting – all those damn phones,all that terrible music -The In-Between possesses the freshness and immediacy of newly printed observation,robbed of journalism’s glib summaries. The world it portrays is barely post-COVID,and nervous with its rediscovered freedoms. The writerly attitude here is modern and wide-ranging but robbed of an editorialising tendency. In the place of the hot take or the easily topical,there is the resonant ambiguity of true art.
The novel is among other things about love,trust,and family,but also not “about” these issues in a didactic or tediously preachy manner,nor does it disclose a clear or instructive moral to the reader. The book’s title is purest philosophy – everything is somewhere between left and right,dogmatism and permissiveness,care and abandonment.