I follow Nathan’s blog A Biographer in Perth and thought I would check out his maiden novel of a few years ago now, The Fur. It must be in stock in a warehouse somewhere as my no. 1 favourite bookseller, Crow Books (Victoria Park, WA), had no trouble getting it in for me.

Interestingly it doesn’t have a copyright page but I see in Wikipedia “The Fur … is a science fiction novel by author Nathan Hobby, published in 2004 after winning the 2002 T. A. G. Hungerford Award for unpublished new writers.” I would further categorise it as for Young Adults, probably 16 and over.

I assume Nathan is from ‘down south’, as the setting for the novel is first Collie, in the jarrah forested hills south of Perth, then the provincial city of Bunbury on the coast, and finally Murdoch Uni in Perth’s southern suburbs.