I begin to record the history of it all, because if I don’t I will explode, leaving nothing to tell of me but a pile of ash. In this history I will try to leave nothing out, but I will also be careful not to incorporate any extraneous unnecessary shit. Like objectivity. Objectivity is for those who don’t have a point to make, or a side to take. There is only one side to this story and that’s mine.

1975, Western Sydney.
A street where neighbours keep an eye on everyone else’s business.
A boy and his mum—and a family secret, barely hidden.

Devon Destri flies under the radar. He doesn’t talk—calls himself ‘hard of speaking’—and does nothing to correct any assumptions of his low intelligence. If no one knows otherwise, no one will expect anything of him, and maybe he won’t need to expect anything of himself. Only his fiercely loyal friend, Big Tammy, and his neighbour, Krenek, know that Great Expectations is his favourite book, or that he can read at all.

But when the chilling revelation of his mother’s past unexpectedly blows open his view of himself, and of her, Devon realises he can have great expectations after all.

First, though, he has a score to settle.

Stuart Everly-Wilson lives in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales with his partner and their dog, Aspro. Low Expectations is his first novel.

‘Wild and uninhibited…with an unforgettable cast of characters whom I Immediately started to miss when I closed the book. There's no shortage of brutality—this is, after all, a story about grudges, long memories and revenge—but there's deep love and empathy among this strange cast of suburban exiles.’ Jock Serong