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'Clem Whelan's got a problem: trapped in the suburbs in the Sunnyboy summer of 1984 he has to decide what to do with his life. Matriculation? He's more than able, but not remotely interested. Become a writer? His failed lawyer neighbour Peter encourages him, but maybe it's just another dead end? To make sense of the world, Clem uses his telescope to spy on his neighbours. From his wall, John Lennon gives him advice; his sister (busy with her Feres Trabilsie hairdressing apprenticeship) tells him he's a pervert; his best friend, Curtis, gets hooked on sex and Dante and, as the year progresses and the essays go unwritten, he starts to understand the excellence of it all.
'His Pop, facing the first dawn of dementia, determined to follow an old map into the desert in search of Lasseter's Reef. His old neighbour, Vicky, returning to Lanark Avenue - and a smile is all it takes. Followed by a series of failed driving tests; and the man at his door, claiming to be his father.
'It's going to be a long year, but in the end Clem emerges from the machine a different person, ready to face what he now understands about life, love, and the importance of family and neighbours.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Cosy Naivety of 80s Suburbia
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10 August 2019; (p. 22)
— Review of This Excellent Machine 2019 single work novel'Stephen Orr is one of the key fictional chroniclers of South Australian life. While earlier novels such as Miles Franklin short-listed The Hands and One Boy Missing are set in the state’s bare country towns, This Excellent Machine is a homage to growing up in Adelaide’s lower middle class suburbs in the 1980s; a story of fibro, Datsuns, flaky men and enduring women set in Lanark Ave, Gleneagles, a fictional analogue of the suburb of Hillcrest.' (Introduction)
-
Stephen Orr : This Excellent Machine
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 15-21 June 2019;'About a third of the way through This Excellent Machine, its teenage protagonist, Clem, finds himself in a cafe on the wrong side of town. This is a place where the footpaths are black, because “they’d waited too long to hose down the vomit”. Where anonymous doors lead to underground tattoo parlours and where hand-scrawled signs advertise “massage by the ½ hour”.' (Introduction)
-
Cosy Naivety of 80s Suburbia
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10 August 2019; (p. 22)
— Review of This Excellent Machine 2019 single work novel'Stephen Orr is one of the key fictional chroniclers of South Australian life. While earlier novels such as Miles Franklin short-listed The Hands and One Boy Missing are set in the state’s bare country towns, This Excellent Machine is a homage to growing up in Adelaide’s lower middle class suburbs in the 1980s; a story of fibro, Datsuns, flaky men and enduring women set in Lanark Ave, Gleneagles, a fictional analogue of the suburb of Hillcrest.' (Introduction)
-
Stephen Orr : This Excellent Machine
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 15-21 June 2019;'About a third of the way through This Excellent Machine, its teenage protagonist, Clem, finds himself in a cafe on the wrong side of town. This is a place where the footpaths are black, because “they’d waited too long to hose down the vomit”. Where anonymous doors lead to underground tattoo parlours and where hand-scrawled signs advertise “massage by the ½ hour”.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2021 longlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- 1984
