Book Club - Jordan Prosser’s Big Time

Final Draft - Great Conversations

Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer from Victoria. His short story ‘Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game’ won the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2022. Big Time is his first novel.

In the Free Republic of East Australiaeverything is just bonza. The people toe the line because nobody likes a tall poppy and the threat of indefinite detention is too real to tempt fate.

Music helps to keep the population placated and no one does it better than The Acceptables. Their first album Artificial Beaches on Every Mountain, Artificial Mountains on Every Beach launched them into the public consciousness and now Julian Ferryman’s been summoned home lest he lose his spot on Bass for the band’s sophomore album.

Julian’s been travelling outside the tightly controlled borders of the FREA and he’s not returning alone though; he’s seen the world and the FREA doesn’t love outsider perspectives. Julian’s also seen the future courtesy of the new designer drug ‘F’, but once you’ve seen your future, where does that leave your present?

…

Big Time is a wild ride into a fascist dystopian future where everybody is tightly monitored but seems ok with it if it keeps the peace.

The Acceptables made good in this climate with their crowd pleasing debut but now they have to face up to sophomore album syndrome. Julian would love to just keep the public happy but lead singer Ash has other ideas. He’s got dreams of being a rock’n’roll messiah but seems to have forgotten how that story ended.

As the band enters their recording sessions the only thing keeping Julian going is looking into his future on ‘F’. These glimpses of his soon-to-be keep him calm. Nothing can surprise him and so he just lets life happen.

But ‘F’ isn’t just some benign vision of the future. People are tripping forward past their own deaths and all around the world an epidemic of coincidences make it seem like time has run out and is starting to repeat on itself.

It’s almost impossible to not make pithy comparisons to try and sum up Big Time. My best effort is Aldous Huxley writing Almost Famous as directed by David Lynch. I think the comparisons are a way of trying to grasp the originality and throw a blanket over the wild ideas long enough to try and wrap your mind around them.

At its heart this is a story about art and how it might just be our salvation, if we can truly embrace it and not just brush over its surface.

Stylistically the novel weaves throughout this future imperfect at a satisfyingly breakneck pace. Counternarratives weave through The Acceptable story building towards a dark horizon. Just as you start to think you can hum along to the tunes on the Acceptables new album, the bands about to go full Rumours and we find ourselves getting a little road trip freedom fighter and pulls the rug out again.

There’s a lot of buzz around Big Time and I have to agree that there’s something to hype here. Jordan Prosser has created a narrative that feels like it's talking to our era whilst also fizzing with an energy of a different time. The story is punchy and the characters as frustratingly real to the point that you’ll be rooting for them even when they start to annoy you with their poor decisions.

Hard recommend from me for Big Time. This is one I’d like to hear more from.