Showing Lion Attack! by Oliver Mol

From an inaugural winner of the Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers comes a funny, energetic coming-of-age story that isn't quite like any other book you'll read this year.

Oliver is a writer who's just moved cities. He doesn't have any friends yet; he can't get his surly flatmate, Mark, to crack a smile; and the only people who talk to him are the odd assortment of characters at the KeepCup warehouse where he works, plugging lids into cups in an endless cycle.

His hours consist of daydreams: sweet, touching reveries of driving down the freeway with the girl of his dreams, and outlandish fantasies of bursting through the roof at bedroom store Snooze.

Oliver is lonely. For the most part, he is sleepwalking through life. At nights, he begins to write memories of growing up in pre-9/11 America, as he finds himself thinking of his childhood in Texas. But when he meets up with Lisa, the girl he's been writing to on Facebook, things begin to change.

Lion Attack! is a startlingly original, ambitious work about a young man trying to navigate contemporary Australia and his own life. Part romance, part tragicomedy, and part social critique, it is hilarious, poignant, and ultimately deeply moving.