“I was an agent of Dan, a captive of his, really. I went where he wanted me, and did as he wanted, and for a long time, in this way, I was happy.”
It's been a long winter in a creaky house in Brunswick, where a young man has devoted himself to recreational showers, staring at his phone, and speculating on the activities of his best friend and housemate, Dan. But now summer is coming, and Dan has found a boyfriend and a job, so the young man is being pushed out into the world, in search of friendship and love.
The Adversary is a sticky summer novel about young people exploring their sexuality and their sociability, where everything smells like sunscreen and tastes like beer, but affections and alliances have consequences. It asks what kinds of stories are possible – or desirable – for which kinds of friendships, and what happens when you follow those stories to their natural conclusions.
PRAISE FOR THE ADVERSARY
Scott’s debut novel is the summer we didn’t get to have. … It’s a beautiful, engaging and relatable read.
Since I turned the first page, my continuing and changing response to this book has given it a Rorschach-like quality in my life. … Ronnie has astutely depicted a particular slice of queer Melbourne life with a sharp eye and deep compassion, and I found myself feeling homesick for a city I’ve never lived in.
—Amelia Lush, Sydney Writers Festival Bunker Reading List
Scott adeptly mines the complexities of queer desire and kinship, revealing how bonds between queer men—whether as friends, lovers or in-between—can be vague and undefined but also anchoring and deeply affecting at the same time. The Adversary is a moving and revelatory book and is sure to join the queer Australian canon.
—Nathan Smith, Books and Publishing
Ronnie Scott has gifted readers the most relatable coming-of-age narrative I’ve encountered in some time. … Scott has captured a pitch-perfect slice of the inner-north of Melbourne. … Full of humour and resulting in the some of the biggest laughs a book has given me in a long time, it’s early to make the call but it is certainly going to be hard to top The Adversary as book of the year for me.
—Ford Thomas, Readings Online
The Adversary is moving, moody, surprising, funny and wonderfully clear-eyed storytelling. Scott is a sharply observant master of the sexual and social lives of a group of friends, all in the process of becoming who they hope to be. This book doesn’t just engage the reader, it captures us.
—Amy Bloom
The Adversary is stunning in its honesty, astounding in its intimacy. Warm, sexy, bittersweet, and capacious, Scott's novel is an instant classic—the boy-meets-boy-meets-boys debut I've been waiting to read for a long, long while. We're simply lucky to have it.
—Bryan Washington
A subtle, savage and elegant work of fiction.
—Peter Polites
Ronnie Scott’s The Adversary offers that most rare and wonderful thing: a fresh, original voice. By turns claustrophobic and euphoric, intimate and defamiliarising, this slow-burn novel is smart, strange and utterly compelling. The kind of book that will have you missing the characters and wondering what they’re doing long after you greedily consume its final pages. I loved it!
—Emily Bitto
Terrific, sad and elegant and funny and also bloody moving. Quietly, unexpectedly moving.
—Christos Tsiolkas
Ronnie Scott captures the ironic cadence, casual obsessions and gay neuroses of a generation and delivers something wryly funny, very endearing and – in the best possible way – too real.
—Benjamin Law
Sharp, clever and fizzing with the kind of anxiety that provides a brittle edge to the gorgeousness of youth, The Adversary is a hilarious ride through queer Melbourne. If Evelyn Waugh had lived in Melbourne and had access to Grindr maybe he would have written The Adversary. Luckily we have Ronnie Scott.
—Krissy Kneen
Profile in The Saturday Paper
Shelf Reflection at Kill Your Darlings
The Edit: What we love this week at Domain Review
Interview on ABC 774 Afternoons with Jacinta Parsons
Interview at The Informer Daily on JOY 94.9
Four New Novels to Satisfy Your Sally Rooney Craving at Readings
Ten Terrifying Questions at Booktopia
Books to Make You Laugh Out Loud in Marie Claire
Interview in Books & Publishing
A most anticipated book of 2020 at Readings
The books to read in 2020 in the Age/SMH