Letters – December 2025
The beautiful, amoral people
Having vivisected Mr. Vowles’s novel in the August issue of ABR, I now feel compelled to defend it. David Bradford’s complaint in his letter, ‘An utterly implausible sauna scene’ (ABR, October 2025), is that Our New Gods is inaccurate and ‘defamatory of the gay community’. The first charge is false: Vowles’s setting is also my setting, and I think he captures Melbourne’s queer scene with forensic accuracy. As for the second charge, maybe the letter writer should familiarise himself with the conventions of psychological thrillers, melodramas, and noir fiction. Our New Gods isn’t a Pride pamphlet that seeks the most flattering presentation of the queer community. Above all, Vowles wants to entertain; to press his reader’s nose up against the glass: here, inside, are all the beautiful, amoral people, the bad people behaving badly, and what a thrill they are to watch.
Jonathan Ricketson
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