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The Good Losers

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The Good Losers

By: Meg Bignell
Narrated by: Meg Bignell
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About this listen

Callie March is fascinated by human absurdity, including the habits of the upper class. So when she pushes her screen-addicted teenage son to join a local rowing club, she is thrilled to discover a whole new world of odd behaviours, irrational obsessions and riverside rooting.

Thrust into a support crew and a very silly uniform, Callie has inadvertently volunteered for a season of pre-dawn parenting, endless fundraising, and pandering to insufferable dickheads. But she also finds friendship, intrigue and lust, while her son might just find love.

Callie is torn between enchantment and repulsion, until a trail of corruption and scandal leads to deep suspicion. There's something fishy in the rowing shed, and Callie is determined to find out what lurks behind the closed doors of this sports club. In doing so, she will rock the boat - or better still, capsize it altogether.

This novel is set in northern Tasmania. It contains profundity, profanity, heart-ache, bum chafe, terrible winners and very good losers.



©2025 Meg Bignell (P)2025 Penguin Random House Australia Audio Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction Heartfelt Sports

Critic Reviews

'a boisterous tale of music, friendship and women's rights' - Books+Publishing

'a feminist grenade disguised as a book' - Rebecca Sparrow
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I really loved this. At times hilarious, always irreverent and with moments of poignancy and pathos. Laughed out loud. Highly recommend. Narration is excellent. What’s not to love?

Great entertainment

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Really enjoyed this book, Great narrator, story and characters. I will reread this book in the future.

Great read.

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I loved this book! My second Meg Bignell and one that goes firmly on to my list of “worth a relisten”. The characters are so well drawn. Laugh out loud moments blend seamlessly with a witty takedown of the crass behaviour that sometimes comes with entitlement and privilege. Highly recommended.

Fabulous, feisty characters.

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This was a hard one to put down. The right amount of suspense, humour and entertainment. I found myself laughing out loud and feeling a real connection to the characters.

Loved this book

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Enjoyed the ride (or row!) overall, the family (particularly the sisters), the less traditional relationships, and the optimism in the end. Laughed out loud plenty of times. It took a little bit of time to get all the characters straight but the fabulous narration and accents really helped. Although set with the backdrop of rowing, it could have been any club - sport or otherwise that brings people from different backgrounds together.

Totally relatable and totally absurd

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My first Mag Bignell book. Some great characters, mostly a bit off centre which adds to their appeal. The story idea is sound and progresses well. There’s the interesting twist of a mystery running alongside the shenanigans of a rowing club.
All is going well but then this story jumps the shark. You’ll know what I mean when you get to it. The explanation of an organisation and how it works is implausible. The logistics and legalities make it too far fetched.
Then right at the end it jumps the shark again…this time it’s when a person is introduced, and again it’s pretty implausible that he ends up briefly in Tasmania!
Nonetheless the story is good and so is the character development. I’ll give another Meg Bignell book a go for sure.

Good…and mostly believable!

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.