This sporting life  Patrick Ness revels in a world of male-
bonding yuppies, cocaine and endurance swimming   by Malcolm
Knox  393pp, Old Street, £10.99  Jamaica comes garlanded with
extravagant-seeming praise from Malcolm Knox's native Australia,
one critic even comparing it to George Eliot. This kind of
hyperbole can be off-putting (and as your faithful reviewer, I'd
never use hyperbole in a million, billion years), but don't let
the author suffer for it. Though I somehow doubt Eliot would be
writing about despicable Australian yuppies if she were alive
today, Jamaica is still a remarkable book: witty,
psychologically acute and muscularly well written, a summer read
that could very well blindside you.  Jeremy "Hut" Hutchinson, "a
twenty dollar haircut on a ten dollar head", is the eager
linchpin of a group of wealthy Sydneysiders. He was born into
money but is desperate for the acceptance of men even richer
than himself, personified here by Blackman and Pongrass, both
former Olympians, and both sleek, confid