"…in Queanbeyan, Helen Kalasoudas couldn’t break even; down in Mildura, Jim Melemenis got himself into trouble with the Italians; Mick Papacostas and his brothers were playing too much dice in Camperdown…"

Setting sun, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

 Lucky's by Andrew Pippos

Another book that chooses to advance its story irregularly. Dynamically shifting timelines are so typical these days that I am unsure whether the word irregular fits anymore!

We primarily dwell in 2002, where the unmoored Emily leaves her failing marriage in the UK to set about researching and writing a New Yorker article about the rise and fall of a now-defunct Australian chain of family restaurants, one that ended in a mass shooting. Shadowing this journey is the mystery of her long-dead father's interest in what seems to be nothing more than a little bit of trivia on the other side of the world.

From here, we jump back first to 1944 for a while, then back twenty years previously as we get our heads around the Greek diaspora. Between zipping back and forth to 2002, we spend a bit of time in the 1940s and 1950s on the emergence of the Lucky's empire and dissolution of a marriage. Moreover, we have the mystery of Emily's father revealed (and reburied).

It is odd that the mass shooting felt a little tacked on and somewhat immaterial to the core events of the piece. It feels like it should be more critical to the narrative. While the story's gravitational pull - from both past and present - builds in tension leading to the massacre in the early-1990s, I found it significantly less compelling than the present-day arc involving the titular character's run on Wheel of Fortune.

I did enjoy the book's exploration of the lives of migrants (and the milk bar culture of the 50s and 60s) in the immediate post-war period. It would likely make for a colourful and engaging mini-series. Thumbs up, albeit slighter than I expected.

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