Neon Line

Thompson's city is Sydney, and perhaps the most impressive feature of his writing is the way the physical reality of the city is caught throughout the prose, and the power with which Thompson draws the skin of human relationships over this brutal and jagged landscape that cuts and moulds them. - Neil Armfield, ABC Radio



Thompson's prose is fast and sharp and he creates in these episodes an extraordinary feeling of the city and its people as somehow integrated in the one sliding, crumbling disintegrating world. Neon Line is a disturbing vision of today's young urban culture. - Nation Review



The outstanding success of Neon Line, to my mind, is Thompson's portrayal of Marlene, where he has captured through the voice of the woman herself, a tortured, lonely, and utterly persuasive individual, an achievement which is apparently rare in male-written fiction. - Australian Book Review