A boy lies dead in his Tokyo apartment, electrocuted and alone. An insurance assessor is sent to determine whether it was suicide.

Only he can’t figure it out. He’s tried and failed to untangle the ball of wool that is this boy’s life. Now, he presents the knotted mess as it is for someone else to pick at. He can’t do it. He’s tired. Forty-five years old and tired.

This is not your average narrative. It’s barely a narrative at all. It’s a body of evidence, the writing on the wall, a badly written rant scrawled on the back of fish-and-chips paper, photocopied a hundred times and pushed into unwilling hands on the steps of Flinders Street station. It’s a dating app charting the criss-crossed paths of backpackers and ghosts, apes and freaks and morons, and technology. Always technology.

It’s real life, and it’s happening now.

This is MEAT MANIFESTO. I think it’s a good book.