The Naked Drinking Club

Jul 18, 2025 10:08 AM

Author:Rhona Cameron

The Naked Drinking Club

'It was dark when I came to. What woke me was the cold and the water on my legs. I was doing spoons with Scotty, me behind him. We were on a beach. We didn't speak for the first minute, we were so disorientated. I had to genuinely think very hard about where I was. Then I remembered I was in Australia.'

It's the late eighties and 24-year-old Kerry has been drifting aimlessly through life in Edinburgh. Rarely having plans of any kind, she gets drunk and things happen: sex, drugs, parties, relationships, and, when she's really pushed, work.

Setting off on a hastily arranged visit to Australia, Kerry packs only three items of clothing, a pair of flip-flops, two hundred pounds and her young persons' work visa. Soon broke, hungry and homeless, she joins ART, a likeable but mismatched band of travellers who sell dodgy oil paintings door-to-door in the suburbs. Young, beautiful and free, they drink wildly and live for the moment.

Embarking on a riotous road trip together, their lives become deeply entangled, and the drinking spirals out of control. Eventually, Kerry is forced to admit that her journey to Australia isn't quite what it seems ...

Reviews

A beautiful depiction of addiction and hedonism

—— Russell Brand

A sexy, booze-fuelled adventure. Instantly entertaining and absorbing

—— Heat

Splendidly realised ... bravely un-saccharine

—— Daily Telegraph

Extraordinarily candid and moving ****

—— Mirror

Nihilistic, frank, brutal, embarrassing, depressing, funny and intensely gripping all at once

—— Glasgow Herald

Cameron reveals a darker edge to her writing by capturing the frustration and pains of obsession with dense detail. Cameron's story of self-discovery shows just how lost you can get, and her perfect references to the 80s and Australian culture pull you in head-first

—— Gay Times

A novel which at one stroke puts her unquestionably among the great masters of the genre . . . as spine-chilling . . . as anything Edgar Allan Poe dreamed up.

—— Peter Green , Daily Telegraph

The Bell is not frightening, precisely, but it offers that uneasy sensation of being suspended, somehow, between what is familiar and what is strange… a kind of hot, dreamlike muddle… The Bell has, in the 60 years since its publication, lost none of its power to disrupt

—— Sarah Perry , Daily Telegraph

A masterpiece of Gothic suspense

—— Joyce Carol Oates

So eerie, so disturbing, and not a wasted word, it has the kind of economy I wish I knew how to achieve

—— Jonathan Coe

For me, it is that unique and dreamlike book ... that stands as her masterpiece

—— Jonathan Lethem

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Jackson's masterpiece ... Stunning

—— Elaine Showalter

Manages the ironic miracle of convincing the reader that a house inhabited by a lunatic, a poisoner, and a pyromaniac is a world more rich in sympathy, love and subtlety than the world outside

—— Time

A witch's brew of eerie power and startling novelty

—— The New York Times

A marvellous elucidation of life ... a story full of craft and full of mystery

—— The New York Times Book Review

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry

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