What a rollercoaster! I don't know if there is such a thing as the Great Australian Novel, but Steve Toltz seems to have written it, an accomplishment even more astonishing if we consider it's his first book.

This is the story of the Dean family, and more specifically of Martin Dean, a pessimist, empathizer and home-made philosopher who tried to fight death with his immortality projects, of his brother, Terry Dean, who began as a prodigy sport kid to become later Australia's notorious villain-hero by murdering people who rigged sports and games, and also of Jasper, Martin's son, who is also the main narrator in the book (the other one is his father).

It is also, in its own way, the story of the post-war Australian society till the beginning of the 21st century, a society vastly unknown to the rest of the world, which gives extraordinary importance to sports, wildfires and mass media, and recently treats immigrants as a threat to its stability.

Moreover, it's a story that expands to three continents, as we follow the heroes in Europe and Asia, to many literature sub-genres (existentialist novel, family saga, coming-of-age novel, crime fiction, mystic fiction, satire, humour fiction, to name just a few) and to many different levels of meaning.

All in all, it's a book that not only I really enjoyed a lot, but also a book that made me laugh hard, even in its most dark parts, and a book with many quotable parts.