Book Review: Afternoons with Harvey Beam
Afternoons with Harvey Beam Carrie Cox Fremantle Press, 2018 There would be few vehicles less perfect to write a book about the dysfunction of modern life than making your protagonist a talkback radio host. Harvey Beam, once the star of a Sydney commercial radio station, begins his journey back to his old home town of Shorton in disgrace. His father, Lionel, is dying in hospital and so Harvey steps away from an employer who wants to replace him and returns to the place where it all began. Not much seems to have changed, except for Harvey himself. His two sisters, Naomi and Penny are still engaged in a never-ending argument, his brother Bryan is still sitting on his high horse and relishing being the favourite brother, and it's still impossible to get a decent cup of coffee anywhere in the town. Yet compared to Sydney, Shorton is a breath of fresh air for Harvey. Though at first he resents the idea of having to go back to a small town in the mi...