Party Boy

Marco is stressed. On one hand, he’s a cook in a progressive city bar, a married father of three, doing all he can to raise his boys right. On the other (slightly burnt) hand, his life is chaos. Every day seems full of cruel and unusual obstacles, from temperamental arancini to a car breakdown at the worst possible time. Painkillers and booze can only do so much to protect him from the fallout of his adolescence – the bullying, the fear, the things that were done to him and the things he did.

Now his fiftieth birthday is approaching, and all the ghosts of his life are invited to the party. It feels like his last chance, though he isn’t sure for what.

‘A novel I’ve been hoping for! Party Boy is a shock of a book about damaged males, about being a father, a husband, a son, an idiot, someone trying to make amends. Somehow it manages to be both pulse-rattling and poetic, and from its daring mix of comedy and terror, what arrives is finally a deeply affecting portrait of a man on the edge.’ —Damien Wilkins, author of Delirious

Breton Dukes is the author of three acclaimed short story collections: What Sort of Man (2020), Empty Bones (2014) and Bird North (2011). He has worked in hospitals, language schools, gymnasiums, bars, kitchens, factories and government call centres, and has received the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary. He lives with his wife and three children in Dunedin.

Cover: Dudley Benson