AustLit

'A CHAOTICALLY disassembled Sunbeam Talbot on a garage floor; a movie that is a great idea but has no cast, script or backers; and a design that nobody has ever thought of but will make a million.

'These, together with a belief that he is destined to be a millionaire as soon as some thing turns up, a hatred of his home country Australia, a beautiful wife, and weird friends are the public and private parts of Charlie Hope's mind. They are chronicled by his compatriot and friend, Nathan Fine, who is a starving novelist without a novel, a refugee from a brothel in Tangiers and the man who watches as Charlie's hopes are slowly but cruelly wrenched from his pudgy fingers as a disbelieving bettor watches his horse turn a graceful but final somersault on the last hurdle and him leading by the price of happiness. Charlie, who is going to lick the system hollow, who is going to walk out of the jungle and by George, be rich, who is the distant Australian cousin of Willy Loman, who escapes to the colony like Micawber before the shaking edifice of his fantasies descends on his uncomprehending head with the wrath of slumbering dogs, whose ego pirouettes in the vacuum of his happiness, is a failure.'

Source:

McPherson, Bruce. 'The London Jungle', Canberra Times, 11 January 1969, p.10.