Booker, a smooth-talking Englishman, who, fueled by mutual feelings of being trapped and bored with life, begins an affair with her made all the easier by his wife's proclivity for falling asleep in a boozy haze. Like the town's other residents, she drinks copiously and waits for something to happen that will give color to her humdrum life. 'Everyone in it was like me, trying to move on and start something, anything at all, even if it was almost certain to go bad,' explains 16-year-old narrator Martha. Restlessness pervades Taylor's debut novel of suburban claustrophobia and the difficulty of cutting ties to even an unhappy home. ‘Elegant and controlled and wickedly funny.’ David Vann Refreshing, surprising, sexy and ultimately very moving.’ Krissy Kneen

These characters feel so real that they become almost family. ‘Cory Taylor's Me and Mr Booker has the heart of Lolita and the soul of Catcher In The Rye, this is one of the most assured debut novels I have ever read. ‘Me and Mr Booker is sharply observed and blackly comic, but it is also a tender depiction of love, sex, power and one girl's heartbreaking step into adulthood.’ Australian Bookseller + Publisher ‘A vibrant, questioning and unpredictable read.’ West Australian ‘Cory Taylor’s characters are magnificently created.’ Australian She died on 5 July 2016, a couple of months after Dying: A Memoir was published. Her first novel, Me and Mr Booker, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Pacific Region) in 2012 and her second novel, My Beautiful Enemy, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2014.

She was an award-winning novelist and screenwriter who also published short fiction and children’s books.

Me and Mr Booker, Cory Taylor’s acclaimed debut, is a novel about feeling old when you’re young and acting young when you’re not.Ĭory Taylor was born in Queensland in 1955. Of course she would kiss the charming Englishman who brightened her world with whiskey and cigarettes, adventure and sex-whatever the consequences. But Martha is sixteen, she lives in a dull town, her father is mad, her home is stifling. Martha could have said no when Mr Booker tried to kiss her. He would say what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. I know what Mr Booker would say on the topic of experience.

Me and Mr Booker by Cory Taylor