The Constant Losers by Alex Wild

ISBN 978-1-877441-14-1

A novel of text-talk, musomania, mix tapes, student bars and library intrigues, The Constant Losers starts with a google search for ‘boykrew fan club’ and ends in a ‘zine war’. The book’s heroes are two students whose strange relationship begins in print and develops through a series of chaotic encounters.

Packed with graffiti art, found notes, pencil sketches, music criticism and suprisingly sordid stories of worklife in an Auckland library in the early noughties, The Constant Losers celebrates and castigates twenty-first century youth culture. Wild has a sharp eye for the improvised spelling, grammar, and morality of the cellphone generation, but The Constant Losers also shows off her concern with literary form and tradition, and her almost anthropological ability to examine and interpret her characters.