The Dark Wet

The Dark Wet is Jess Huon’s first collection of short stories. Its three sequences explore the intense relationships between childhood friends, and later their spiritual companions, through the experience of sex, drugs, artistic expression and religious belief. The first sequence centres on Jed Harp’s aching but undeclared love for his friend Daniel Hess; the second, on the wild androgynous desire of Isabelle and Oliver, riding across the boundaries of gender; the third follows the path of a young woman in India, from Buddhist monastery to Christian ashram to the erotic enchantments of a Hindu guru.

Huon’s characters have known confusion and grief, but they dance their way ‘out of the mould’ of conformity, opening themselves to others and to the world in unguarded affirmation. These same qualities, of risk and emotion and vitality, are what make Huon’s writing so rich and distinctive.