Publisher's Synopsis
A city, like any ecosystem, is a delicate web of players and interactions. There are predators, various types of prey and things that clean up the crumbs. Also, and again like any other ecosystem, if you mess with that order, there will be ramifications. Set in Perth, Australia, and to a backdrop of the onset of the 1994 heroin epidemic, GOON comically explores the tensions between the various subcultures and ethnicities prevalent at the time; including the National Front, Motorbike gangs, Vietnamese drug cartels, the Calabrian Mafia, punks, skinheads, metal-heads, the grunge scene and a disenfranchised aboriginal community. The characters includes: Spewie, a happily psychotic metal-head with no morals and a speed habit; Tommo, a skinhead bouncer who has a serious dislike for Spewie; Bikie Frank, who is desperately trying to ingratiate himself with a motorbike gang; Dealer Dave, an anarco-punk who controls the supply of amphetamines to the local alternative scene; Sandra, a world weary bartender; and Ewan, a drunk Welsh migrant, who, like everyone in the story, drinks copious amounts of GOON (a local term for cheap boxed wine) as he navigates the ordered chaos of the urban milieu. GOON is a collection of true stories that have been comically tempered with poetic licence to weave a narrative that illustrates the complexity of an urban environment, the intricacy of the relationships within it, and the lived reality of the city and its inhabitants at the time.
