From the author of two previous Penguin titles comes a wickedly funny, deeply human novel about cultural identity, unlikely love, and the price of belonging.
What happens when a struggling Australian coastal town rebrands itself to attract an American call centre — and loses its soul in the process? That’s the question at the heart of Somewhere Under the Rainbow, the sharp new tragicomic novel from award-winning author Dorian Mode.
Set in the fictional town of Slaughterhouse Bay — hastily renamed “Lincolns Rainbow” in a desperate bid for American investment — the novel follows two intertwined love stories playing out against a backdrop of cultural collision. Aloysius “Wish” Huckabee, heir to a Forbes-listed American fortune, arrives to run a call centre designed to train Asian workers in “American” customer service — only to fall for Sandy, the foul-mouthed, fiercely resourceful local cleaner who teaches him more about authenticity than his Ivy League education ever did. Meanwhile, English publisher Stella Caulfield, freshly divorced and adrift, finds herself drawn to Foyle, a reclusive lighthouse-dwelling writer still haunted by the death of his wife.
What unfolds is a novel that is equal parts satire and love story — one that asks pointed questions about what gets lost when a place tries to become something it’s not, and what’s gained when people finally stop pretending.
“I wanted to write about the strange comedy of cultural imperialism — but from the inside, through people who are funny and flawed and trying to find themselves,” says Dorian Mode. “It’s about a town losing its accent, quite literally, and two people finding their true north.”
Fans of Christos Tsiolkas’s social bite, the fish-out-of-water humour of The Rosie Project, and the satirical edge of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout will find much to love in this genre-bending novel — one that refuses to sit quietly in a single category.
Somewhere Under the Rainbow is Dorian Mode’s third novel, following two previous titles published by Penguin. Dorian is also a travel writer of twenty years’ standing, whose work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, NRMA Open Road Magazine and other major outlets — experience that lends the novel’s globe-trotting, culture-clashing texture its authentic sting.
Somewhere Under the Rainbow is available now at Amazon via this link.
For event bookings, readings, or press enquiries, contact me@dorianmode.com