Dave Eggers is a giant of American letters, whose many novels include The Every, The Circle and A Hologram for the King. Moving on from tech dystopia, he brings us a vibrant, big-hearted portrait of a sexually charged friendship across a lifetime, which captures the addictive push and pull of life’s most complex relationships and possesses the character-driven immersion of Our Evenings. In 1980s Indiana, Cricket, the teenage son of a single mum with a taste for bad men, meets a girl like no other: Olympia. Cricket has artistic talent and ambition but little cash or opportunity, yet Olympia encourages him, while opening his eyes to new ideas and proclaiming they must start a movement. From art school to encounters in New York, Thailand and Paris, she blasts in and out of his life repeatedly, on her own dizzying trajectory through the art world. Opposites attract, and Cricket is a classical drawing purist, who finds freedom in rejecting conceptual pretensions and commercial imperatives. Through their intertwined stories, with insight and humour, Contrapposto illuminates an art world remodelled by money and celebrity while considering life’s big questions of creativity, friendship, love and loss. Eggers studied art, and the book includes some of his drawings.