The Mermaid Café (Andy Maconachie, Hodder, $32.95 tpb, ISBN 0733618944, March) **

Country boy and upcoming artist Wallace Newman is awarded an arts grant and moves to a hotel at Sydney’s Coogee beach to paint pictures of mermaids. Almost as soon as he arrives, he becomes involved in the lives of an array of characters, including an embittered prostitute, a highly strung hotel manager and an elusive swimmer who develops into his mermaid-like muse. But things don’t go the way Wallace plans—being closer to the water doesn’t help his initial artistic pursuits and the money granted to him by the arts board isn’t exactly used for new paints and brushes. As his relationships intensify and as he learns more and more about Coogee culture, Wallace’s understanding of art becomes an understanding of self. This book is a light read and at times it is lacking in subtlety and character development. While some of the beach-culture moments are delightfully quirky, the characters and plot suffer from a story that seems a little too location-driven. The Mermaid Café is among a number of recently-released Australian fiction titles with strong artistic themes. In this case, Andy Maconachie manages to make the artists’ classic search for inspiration (and something to fund it) unique and amusing. Booksellers and librarians may find an audience for this story among readers wanting to nurture their inner bohemian.

Erin O’Brien is AB&P’s editorial assistant

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker