Steve Holden is a journalist and writer. His latest book is Somebody to Love, published by University of Queensland Press.http://www.amazon.com/Somebody-to-Love-ebook/dp/B004KSQC32/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1318972126&sr=1-4Here's what Dennis Altman has to say about Somebody to Love:Let me suggest an extraordinary Australian novel: Steve Holden's Somebody to Love. This is the story of a transsexual mortician in small town Tasmania, beautifully written, and with huge insight. It comes from University of Queensland Press, who often pioneer Australian writing, and deserves to be better known. It's gritty and demanding, but also one of the most moving books of the last few years.Here's what GQ had to say about Somebody to Love:This extraordinary little gem is about, well, let's not ruin any at its twists (better avoid the blurb, too). Safe to say, it's sparingly told in one of this year's most distinctive voices and its innocent narrative somehow matures into a scathing investigation of self; what we mean to ourselves and to others; how we internalise and project the seeming certainties of identity. Somebody to Love is a masterclass in modern philosophy seductively told through Holden's Tasmanian mortuary worker and a morbid little plot to boot.Here's what Australian Book Review had to say about Somebody to Love:Steve Holden's début novel puts us inside the head of a transsexual mortician living in a small Tasmanian town. It could be a stifling and lonely place to be, but the nameless protagonist draws us persuasively into her world. As a mortician, her job is to disguise death, but as a storyteller she is able to illuminate it for our benefit.The tale unravels during the busiest weekend in the history of the mortuary. As she prepares three bodies for burial, she reflects on her difficult life. Methodical and ordered in her work, it is her heart that is a mess. We feel for her. Butthe effect Holden has on the reader is that of an ambidextrous push and pull: his narrator keeps us at one arm's length whilst drawing us closer with the other.The mortician is obsessed with transitions - from life to death, from man to woman. Once she gets rid of her pesky priapic overhang, the narrator's prose style seems to be clipped of all extraneousness.The language is stark and we are hooked to her persistent, insistent tone. At times the voice is so simultaneouslyalienating and mesmerising that we could almost mistake the book for Humbert Humbert Goes to Hobart.The book is strewn with dead bodies, both human and animal. The shadows of her deceased parents, particularly that of her taxidermy obsessed father, loom disturbingly over each incision and stitch.The pace - steady and measured throughout - slowed for me near the end, but perhaps that's because I was so eager to race ahead to find out what would happen to this fascinating, messed-up person. At once sterile and intimate, Somebody to Love is an excellent, engrossing first novel.His first book, The Bird in the Egg and other stories, published by Ginnindera Press, was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award in 2009. He won a Melbourne Press Club Quills Award in 2008, the Alan Marshall Short Story Award and FAW-Tasmania Writers' Award in 2006, and the ABC Radio National Short Story Award in 1995.