I've been a fan of Tsiolkas since his masterpiece The Slap (2008), and have read everything he has produced since. 7 1/2 is his attempt to write something a bit different, less confronting, less explicit, more about love and beauty and landscape in the form of auto fiction. It's narrated by a writer at a coastal retreat to write a book, and so it's a book within a book, as the reader switches between the story of the writer, and his evolving work. It's descriptive and evocative of the beauty of the coast, the weather and the sea, and the story within the story is engaging and powerful. I think it would have benefitted from a tighter edit: some of the descriptions are repetitive, and there are too many adjectives, but it remains a moving and very contemporary work.