“Now that I’m dead… ” begins the murdered narrator of Steve Toltz’s new book, whose chapters alternate between the afterlife and a near-future Sydney beset by “drone terrorism, nanobot murders, hurricane firestorms and utter global chaos”. The Covid era, known as “the Fattening” (“all that gruelling isolation and silly panic buying and overeating… The only thing we learned was how to hide from deliverymen”), has given way to a new pandemic, K9, spread by dogs.
When the news seems like a novel, you may as well play loud, but I’m not sure Toltz knows any other way. The salty explorations of masculinity in his previous books, A Fraction of the Whole (shortlisted for the Booker in 2008) and Quicksand, sometimes resembled being stuck in a lift with an aspiring standup. While the intricate concept behind Here Goes Nothing hints at newfound discipline, the scattershot result suggests he’s still figuring out how to make his routines amount to more than the sum of their parts, which isn’t to say there isn’t fun to be had en route.
The crazier the story, the greater the need for something humdrum to anchor the reader; it’s a basic rule of thumb, but Toltz prefers the rule of the middle finger, pairing a wild backdrop with an equally wild plot. The middle-aged protagonist, Angus, once a violent mugger, now happily married to Gracie, an internet-addicted wedding celebrant, has gone straight, or at least straight-ish, stealing only in order to fund their IVF treatment, an overwhelming expense that leaves them prey to the malevolent schemes of a terminally ill stranger, Owen, who turns up asking for a bed in exchange for a place in his will.
Angus toggles between this madcap houseguest drama and his subsequent interdimensional shenanigans in the afterlife, satirically portrayed as a bureaucratic dystopia facing a refugee crisis prompted by the K9 death toll. Plus ça change seems a damp outcome to all the pyrotechnics, but you sense Toltz feels he’s found his calling amid the ongoing panic over millennial sensitivities. “Why were so many people boasting that vulnerability was their only accreditation?” Gracie wonders after an internet spat over her failure to acknowledge someone’s “lived experience”; Toltz mentions a news item about “a white amputee who had 3D-printed a black hand for his at-home transplant surgery”, a moment that more or less sums up a book that relentlessly digs us in the ribs, sniggering in our ears.
Trouble is, these instincts ill serve Toltz’s tricksy scenario. When Angus explains at length how the dead are reborn free of disease (“all tangled nerves were straightened, all spleens unruptured, all prolapsed anuses reverted to their inverse state”), Toltz has to suddenly remember that Angus is meant to be a stranger in his new world, not a guide (“I’m not saying I understood everything”). The book’s grip on characterisation similarly dissolves in the soupy rancour of its default tone. “The gigantic cunt who was my father died on his favourite stool in his favourite pub and it was the most delightful fucking day of my entire life,” says Owen. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a cunt,” declares Gracie. “Can you stop being a monstrous cunt for just a minute?” asks Angus.
Yes, there are diverting set-pieces, not least when Gracie gives herself a C-section, but so much is flung at the narrative that little of it seems to matter, which wouldn’t be a problem had Toltz not banked on us caring about the apocalyptic climax. The effect, overall, is weirdly akin to a cross between a Lionel Shriver novel and JM Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus, which is maybe only a way of saying that Steve Toltz has a voice all his own – and boy, doesn’t he just love it.
• Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz is published by Sceptre (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
