{"id":846617,"date":"2026-08-07T09:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846617\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T09:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:32:11","slug":"now-autonomy-by-max-easton-review-a-sardonic-yet-compassionate-take-on-millennial-apathy-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/846617\/","title":{"rendered":"Now, Autonomy by Max Easton review \u2013 a sardonic yet compassionate take on millennial apathy | Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

If any part of Australia can lay claim to being the country\u2019s literary nexus, it is western Sydney<\/a>. The wide wing of suburbia is both home to and the subject of granular attention for an ever-growing list of acclaimed writers: Yumna Kassab, Peter Polites, Luke Carman, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Felicity Castagna \u2013 to name just a few. Each of them reflects a culturally diverse landscape in which social class and suburban identity are forever intersecting, animating the lives of those often neglected in the margins of Australia\u2019s projected self-image.<\/p>\n

A key figure in this discourse is Max Easton, whose latest novel \u2013 Now, Autonomy \u2013 is the third instalment of his multi-decade series that chronicles working-class struggle and its subcultural undercurrents in Sydney\u2019s west. Beginning with the Miles Franklin-longlisted The Magpie Wing<\/a> in 2021, and followed by Paradise Estate<\/a> in 2023, this ambitious, compelling quasi-trilogy \u2013 each title can be read and appreciated on its own \u2013 depicts people navigating Australia\u2019s class hierarchies, hyper-gentrification, rental housing pressures and ever-diminishing spaces for community and collective activism.<\/p>\n

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We continue as Easton started, thrown into an ecosystem of progressively minded, albeit flawed, friends trying to sustain a meaningful existence. The shrewd Helen Coleman, who started as a teenager in The Magpie Wing, is now in her late 30s. Among her friends these days is her reclusive flatmate Pat, a middle-aged sound guy who can\u2019t seem to shake the past; her off-kilter former housemate Sunny, whose restlessness for radical change is as irksome as it is imperative; Sunny\u2019s partner, Sio, the only one of them with a somewhat put-together life; and Helen\u2019s partner, Maria, who is caring yet increasingly despondent amid the holding pattern of their relationship.<\/p>\n

Everyone is varyingly disillusioned and struggling to reorient themselves while fending off financial insecurity, creative inertia and interpersonal disaffection. Helen senses an \u201cerosion in the world\u201d: Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza continues unabated despite global protest, the economic gulfs of the 21st century are becoming yawning chasms and the commodification of artistic expression is even infecting the DIY scenes that sprang up in opposition to it. Collectively, there is a psychic strain: everyone cares for each other but is also exhausted by the emotional labour; everyone is quick to speculate about other people\u2019s problems yet uninterested in addressing their own.<\/p>\n

When not numbed before this \u201cgreat defeat\u201d, the gang seek to reorient themselves around a sense of agency and purpose. Reclamation of autonomy \u2013 personal and collective \u2013 is the novel\u2019s focal point, as is the tension in doing so meaningfully. When everyone haphazardly tries to set up a new music venue called The Quarterly, it\u2019s unclear how much it\u2019s really to save \u201cSydney from itself\u201d or themselves from the void. When that ambition is cut short and as fragments of Pat\u2019s activist history are unearthed, a more radical project emerges. But what is really motivating each person? And is being part of an insignificant attempt at change itself still significant?<\/p>\n

Now, Autonomy may sound like a jaded novel \u2013 but though it holds a mirror to cynicism, it is far from cynical itself. Indeed, it is a deeply compassionate work, more interested in diagnosing the causes of apathy than deriding it. As Easton has said<\/a>, a driving motivation for him has been to address his fellow millennials who \u201cbemoan the city and cultural milieu we\u2019ve been handed without realising we\u2019re not providing much more to those who come after us\u201d. His writing is acerbic and sardonically funny while reflecting this, and is palpably alive to the strains of contemporary life while striving to give a voice to the means of resistance.<\/p>\n

In a similar vein to what Emmett Stinson pointed out<\/a> in The Magpie Wing, there are occasions in Now, Autonomy when Easton overtly expounds a point, as if intent on eschewing subtext. For example, when Pat is describing a certain condemned building to Sunny: \u201cEverything is rotting in there. I dunno, I guess everything\u2019s rotting now. The only things doing well are the things that feed on rot. Real estate. Banks. Internet.\u201d Message received. Whether intentional or not, amid what is otherwise a novel of richly rendered place and nuanced characters, these moments at best flatten things and at worst dislodge you from the narrative.<\/p>\n

But as a whole, Easton\u2019s newest addition to his remarkable tapestry of western Sydney is tantalisingly alive. It is an ode to people who reach towards change \u2013 even in ways conceited or delusional \u2013 as they struggle to get by in a world increasingly resistant to accommodating them. You fall effortlessly into their lives and find yourself in them. For that Now, Autonomy should be applauded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If any part of Australia can lay claim to being the country\u2019s literary nexus, it is western Sydney.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-846617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}