The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy
September 2013
Robert Power / Transit Lounge
Robert Power has returned, after his successful 2011 novel In Search of the Blue Tiger, with another finely calibrated novel that addresses many of the dilemmas Power confronts himself in his day job as Head of the Centre for International Health at Melbourne’s Burnet Institute.
Here is protagonist Anthony Malloy amid the little known world of pharmaceutical research, dealing with the uses and abuses that spring from the very real ability to change lives that comes from specialised medical knowledge. Malloy is driven yet conflicted – as issues of contemporary drug use and preventative medical strategies are played out he develops as a flesh and blood, vulnerable, anxious man, with a failing marriage, a complex child and troubled siblings. Power takes us, and Malloy, from London to south-east Asia, the USA and South America – a kind of Lonely Planet journey through drug and disease hotspots, without the voyeurism.
This is another success not just for Power, but importantly too for small local publisher Transit Lounge, doing exceptional things with a very high quality list.
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