You can tell that The Toymaker is literature because it's littered with unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things. Pieper has fashioned an opening chapter designed to weed out the squeamish, replete with underage sex and praise of the teenaged female form. We have to wait before we get to the spoiled lothario's wife, who is slightly better, and then to the Holocaust flashbacks of his Grandfather.

The Toymaker is an easy read that becomes incredibly neat and Teflon like in the final analysis. It's designed to feel like it's challenging without really challenging, and it's not hard to see why it could be the next big thing. If there are people like this in Australian society, better to live in the sea - and I say this as someone who has read multiple Christos Tsiolkas books and not felt quite the same way.