Tom Houghton is the second novel by Australian bookseller and author, Todd Alexander. At age forty, Tom Houghton is a stage actor, gay, alcoholic and occasionally dealing with a mentally fragile mother. A fairly successful run of a gender-reversed version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf sees him offered the same role for the play’s run in the Edinburgh. This experience, and the people he meets seem to precipitate a drunken meltdown in which he alienates many around him. It has him deeply considering his life, and just who he has become.

At the age of twelve, Tom Houghton is accustomed to being bullied at school: he’s not like the other boys, and in the late eighties in Seven Hills, NSW, this is not tolerated. Tom lives with his mum, Lana (Trish) and his grandfather, Pa, deftly hiding any sign of the bullying from them. His passion, indulged and even encouraged by Lana, is movie stars, in particular Katharine Hepburn. When he discovers that he was born on the same day as her brother Tom, his interest becomes an obsession. His attempts to win over his tormentors are doomed to fail, and lead him to drastic action.

Alexander uses a double narrative to tell this moving, thought-provoking and apparently largely autobiographical tale. Tom at twelve draws the reader’s sympathy; a self-centred, self-indulgent Tom at forty, much less so. But Alexander certainly highlights the destructive power of bullying, and the importance of being accepted. A powerful read.