OK. I admit when I picked this book up and I saw she had completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Melbourne Uni and then sat at the feet of a literary parasite of yesteryear to polish the manuscript, I was going to King hit it. Turgid trash. Bum wipe, etc.

Then I read the first page lying on my bed as the afternoon sun fell on my fur. I couldn’t put it down!

I was shocked. For a first novel it’s good. I stayed up to midnight finishing it off. There are some bizarre bits like the squid flying up on the to the beach but let me tell you, the first two novels of Tim Winton were about whales and Christians and Christian whales. They weren’t as good as ‘Hydra’.

Howell drives the plot forward. There’s rat cunning work colleagues, fuck up friends and then she descends into a slow stew of Jim Morrison madness. Won’t someone keep their bloody ghost cougar chained up at night! It’s all a bit gothic.

Howell doesn’t need the advice of failed writers and Melbourne literary jackals to fleece her wallet.

The good news is there’s a new voice on the Australian literary scene who isn’t a depressive or utterly obsessed by family dynamics. Thank God!

I’ll keep an eye out for Howell’s second book.