Somebody Down There Likes Me

Susan's Review 

Australian author Robert Lukins’ third novel is a highly engaging blend of satire, crime fiction and family drama. It centres on the Gulch family, whose obscene wealth and back-stabbing drive for power are symptomatic of the immorality of late 1990s corporate America. The story is narrated from the perspectives of four legally criminal or morally negligent family members. As someone drawn to despicable or dissipated characters in fiction, I found the ghastliness of three of the Gulches particularly compelling. The reclusive father Fax wallows in nostalgia, too stoned or drunk to make any headway with his precious first editions. His sweet-talking wife Honey is the ruthlessly conniving and shamelessly unethical boss of the show. Their hedonistic, hypocritical son Lincoln justifies his selfish behaviour by protesting his self-awareness, as if self-awareness in and of itself is a virtue.

The outsider is Lincoln’s sister Kick. Having turned her back on her family, she reluctantly returns home after learning of the imminent public exposure of her parents’ corrupt business practices. This sets in motion a wild ride of a plot: blackmail, a corrupt FBI agent, adultery, drugs and the unresolved disappearance of Kick’s beloved school friend, nicknamed Mouse. This entertaining plot is enriched by the creation of four distinctive and convincing voices, whip-smart dialogue and a complex depiction of the characters’ troubled pasts.

Somebody Down There Likes Me is both a page-turner that knowingly borrows the tropes of crime noir, and an astute ethical critique of economic excess and hubristic ambition. It’s also a universal domestic drama about unloving or indifferent parents and damaged children. At both the social and personal level, the novel is a darkly comic and poignant vision of a world in which money has become the measure of all things.  

I was a huge fan of Lukin’s earlier and acclaimed novels Everlasting Sunday and Loveland. This new work, its acerbic take on appalling self-interest tempered by compassion for the lonely and lost, is in my view his best yet. It’s due for release in February; you can pre-order a copy at the Lane.

Publisher's Review 

'Lukins' prose is supple and elegant ... his doomed and flailing Gulch family are a stunning comic creation. But even as they writhe and scheme under the law's heel, Lukins builds a highly empathetic study around them, painting all the pathologies that mark our inequitable age.' - Jock Serong, author of Cherrywood

'Robert Lukins is an always elegant, supremely intelligent, bitingly funny chameleon: sign me up for everything he ever writes.' - Kate Mildenhall, author of The Hummingbird Effect

Against the backdrop of the last decadent gasps of the twentieth century, the Gulch family have led a charmed existence in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Belle Haven, Connecticut. Now, the empire they have built is on the edge of collapse, and as the decades of fraud and criminality that lie beneath the family's incredible wealth is exposed, the Gulch children are summoned.

Kick Gulch, desperate and broke, is drawn back into the unreal world she thought she'd escaped forever.

Her brother, Lincoln, one of Belle Haven's shining stars, is revelling in its culture of power and excess, and masterminding his ascendancy.

At the head of the family are Honey and Fax, circling each other as the authorities close in. Fax is drawn out of his dream life of drug-fuelled fantasies, while Honey is willing to reshape the world to see what they have built survive.

As tensions rise and conspiracies are forced to the surface, the truth behind the disappearance of Kick's high school friend comes into question, with each of them facing the complicity of their silence.

For fans of The Secret History, The Corrections and Succession, Robert Lukins has written a brilliant, acerbic dissection of wealth, power and the tragedies even money can't fix.