Julian Halls’s novel The Museum is a recent addition to Australian gay and lesbian fiction. The text engages with an important issue relating to same sex-attracted men and women, but it is ultimately disadvantaged by a distinct sense of amateurishness.

The novel focuses on two couples who are associated with the (fictitious) Truggamora Museum, in Tasmania. The first couple comprises museum employee Robert and his partner, Lloyd, while the second comprises Lloyd’s ex-wife, Dorothy, and her partner, Cindy Lee. Both couples are ‘perfectly happy’ and enjoy a close friendship that is sorely tested when Cindy Lee asks Robert to donate sperm to help her conceive.