Now, Autonomy

Special offer: three novels by Max Easton

Now, Autonomy is Max Easton’s third novel set in Sydney between 1996 and the present following his Miles Franklin-longlisted debut The Magpie Wing and its acclaimed follow-up Paradise Estate. The book expands Easton’s project, unique in Australian fiction, of documenting the dramatically changing modes of contemporary life through the lens of underground scenes and subcultures.

It’s 2024. For Helen, things are going sideways at best. She used to manage a cinema; now she works in a bottle shop. She’s moved from her chaotic sharehouse to an anonymous apartment with disaffected sound guy Pat, who only leaves the couch to go to gigs. Meanwhile, her former housemate Sunny continues to obsess over their ‘anti-hardcore’ band, and has moved in with their drummer, Sio, the only one of them who seems to have their life even halfway together. These characters’ lives intertwine through the underground punk scenes of Sydney, a rising protest movement, and their endless efforts to find a creatively fulfilling life in a city which seems to have no interest in supporting any such thing. Then, out of the grimy air of one of the city’s worst arterial roads, a dilapidated palace looms: an icon of faded glory, which promises the chance that one last radical act will cement their place in radical history.

Traversing anarchist collectives and experiments in autonomous living, political protest and DIY activism, Max Easton’s third novel continues his thirty-year portrait of working-class life in subcultures and music scenes, exploring intergenerational political solidarity, and the ever-present risk of disillusionment under the heavy hand of the state. Now, Autonomy is a novel about the echoes of the past in the present; about the way in which history repeats, even if the lyrics don’t always rhyme.

A novel of radical clarity, about the collective delusions that make culture possible – ideals that fail upwards even as the world falls apart. Max Easton is a real artist, and a real punk.
Ursula Robinson-Shaw

Max Easton is an archivist, an excavator, and a wrecking ball. His writing carves epiphanies out of epitaphs. These are books to claw your way out with.
Patrick Marlborough

A deeply compassionate work, more interested in diagnosing the causes of apathy than deriding it… Easton’s newest addition to his remarkable tapestry of western Sydney is tantalisingly alive. It is an ode to people who reach towards change – even in ways conceited or delusional – as they struggle to get by in a world increasingly resistant to accommodating them. You fall effortlessly into their lives and find yourself in them.
Jack Callil, Guardian Australia

Like The Magpie Wing and Paradise Estate, Now, Autonomy captures the minutiae of the world its characters inhabit with incredible precision. In interviews, Easton has spoken of writing parts of the novel in place, and this feels tangible on the page: his descriptions of the inner lives of his characters and the detail of urban spaces are totally exhilarating.
James Bradley, The Saturday Paper

Easton cares about these characters, and has a gift for making you care about them, too… [He] humanely documents a social underworld we think too little about, even though it exists right under our noses.
David Free, Sydney Morning Herald

If you fancy a trip through Sydney subcultures, Max Easton is your guy.
Sydney Morning Herald (Best new book)

Easton’s novel is an ode to these [well-meaning but flawed] people, who reach towards change – even in ways conceited or delusional – as they struggle to get by in a world resistant to accommodating them.
Guardian Australia (Best new book)

Released at a moment of crisis in the Sydney live music scene due to multiple venue closures, Now, Autonomy fizzes with righteous anger and topical relevance. There’s a satirical undercurrent – no-one seems to realise they live in the most fortified of echo chambers – but also a deep compassion for the characters as they dream of a better world, all while struggling not to be crushed under the weight of late-stage capitalism.
Daniel Herborn, ABC Arts (Best new book)