The Lost Boys

Sam de Brito

Jul 2008 · Picador Australia

About this ebook

Ned is 15. He and his friends while away their days smoking dope, trying to root chicks and surfing at Maroubra. Ned's life is only just beginning - tomorrow, some time.

Ned is 35. He and his mates drift through the days snorting cocaine, trying to root chicks, clinging to the pub and surfing at Bondi. For Ned, this is it - tomorrow never came.

What happens when life passes you by? When the drugs no longer work and the promise of the future has become the wreckage of the past? What happens when a generation of men lose their way?

Confrontingly honest, blackly funny, The Lost Boys is a compelling look at the dark side of being a 21st century man from a powerful new voice in fiction.

Ratings and reviews

I picked up a copy of The Lost Boys after reading the book’s follow up novel, Hello Darkness, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The Lost Boys is a collection of reminiscences by self-loathing protagonist Ned Jelli, 35 years old and drifting aimlessly through life. Ned hates himself; he has no girlfriend, no children, no career to speak of, no motivation to achieve his ambitions, his friends are mostly low lives and he is constantly disillusioned by his inability to cope with the state of change from “old school” Bondi, where he has lived his whole life, to new. The book chronicles the anti-social antics of Ned and his mates via a series of short inter-temporal chapters which fluctuate between Ned’s present day life, his mid twenties and his teen years throughout high school. Although they are mostly hilarious, the average length of each entry is bite-sized at best and I often felt strung along as by the time I invested my attention and interest in a particular occurrence, the chapter would end and the narrative would switch to a new timeline. I often wished the book was divided into three distinct sections so I wasn’t forced to continually adjust my mindset to each setting, but ultimately this delivery method is effective in communicating de Brito’s ideas. This work does a sterling job of documenting the current state of urban society and the social changes occurring in its streets and public venues. Beneath the drug-fuelled, drunken, sex craving actions of his characters de Brito has planted a serious commentary about the state of modern society; its values, pressures and expectations. Ned is the only person in his peer group of men approaching middle age who seems to recognise that their trite lifestyle cannot continue forever, yet he fears rising to the weight of expectations society places on a man his age, instead he chooses to escape constantly via cigarettes, boozing and partying the same way he has since his teenage years. While de Brito takes this concept to the relative extreme, it is a theme popular among current Members of Generations Y and Z and makes for seriously entertaining reading along the way. Overall while I did enjoy Hello Darkness more than The Lost Boys (the first time you discover something is always the best) this book is packed with genuine laugh out loud moments, shocking scenes of debauchery and writing that can only have come from a genuine Aussie male. Not one for the girls.

Dead set rings true on too many levels...

About the author

Sam de Brito has spent more than a decade writing for TV, film and newspapers. His Sydney Morning Herald blog, All Men are Liars, expounds on the business of being a bloke. His first book, No Tattoos Before You're Thirty, offers advice to his unborn children. The Lost Boys is his first novel.