Shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature, Best Writing Award 2012 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2011. The Amateur Science of Love is the debut novel by Craig Sherborne, author of the acclaimed memoirs Hoi Polloi and Muck. Colin dreams of escaping his parents’ farm for a grand stage career. He makes it to London and a disastrous audition before meeting Tilda. Tilda is beautiful, older, an artist and she brings his future with her. A heady romance leads to a small town in country Victoria and a new home in a decaying former bank. They are building a life together, but there are cracks in the foundation. This is a love story, told from passionate beginning to spectacular end. It is intimate and honest, blackly funny and emotionally devastating