APPRECIATION
Oli Darling is a queer artist from the country – it says so right at the top of every press release. His art has brought him fame, money, fashionable substance abuse issues and only a little imposter syndrome. But then he goes on live TV and says the one thing that can get a rich white guy cancelled.
With his reputation in tatters, nobody is buying Oli’s schtick or his art. That’s a problem for all the people who’ve invested millions in him. Powerful, dangerous people. To save his own skin, Oli will need to restore his public image. Together with a ghostwriter, he must do the most undignified thing imaginable: he will have to write a memoir.
So begins a journey through the underbelly of modern celebrity that sees Oli confront the consequences of his own ruthless mythmaking – lies he’s told others, lies he’s told himself. Perhaps he was right to feel like an imposter. And maybe the only way out is to take a good hard look at himself.
Reviews of Appreciation
Satires of the art world have come and gone, but rarely have they been so well-crafted and elegant. – The Australian
Why does Appreciation leave a lasting impression? First, because it never forgets the power of entertaining the reader – The Sydney Morning Herald
Pieper has captured the golden umbilical cord that connects the artist to these figures and drip feeds the creative life. – The Guardian
Appreciation is a literary page turner with no shortage of dramatic flair. The wry and incisive narration is reminiscent of the theatrical work of Oscar Wilde – The Conversation
Achingly tender…funny too – The Saturday Paper
Luxuriously compelling sentences that flow seamlessly from one to another – Arts Hub
Vintage Titles /Tasting Notes
An intoxicating, unsettling story of the battle between light and dark, love and lust, morality and corruption.
Two broken people, man and woman, Aussie and American, find each other on the road to an Indian Ashram.
A high-stakes, self-aware literary thriller mostly peopled by lost souls and corrupt operators – and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
A real depresso martini.
A historical novel with a big old twist at the end.
A third Holocaust survivor generation survivor runs toy company founded by his grandfather that brightens the lives of children around the world; and he has more money than he can ever spend, a wife and child he adores, and treats poorly
And he is not the only one with secrets. In 1944, Adam’s grandfather, Arkady, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and given an impossible choice. Now, as he’s coming to end of his life, he has to keep the truth from his family, and hold back the crushing memories of his time with one of history’s greatest monsters.
Dark, domestic, disturbing.
A memoir of a shy boy an idealistic bohemian family bohemian family becoming a somewhat inept gangster.
Your classic Bildungsroman hero’s journey from a naive kid’s fall into villainy, and rise into a completely different kind of scumbag – a memorist.
Funny, sad, bitter, sweet.
‘Spectacularly well written…profoundly good’ – Annabel Crabb
‘Hugely memorable, The Toymaker is an unflinching examination of the dark instinct for survival that lies in all of us’ – Hannah Kent
‘The most achingly funny, heartsplittingly tragic and brilliantly written book you’ll read this year.‘ – Benjamin Law