Miles Allinson
Autor von Fever of animals
Über den Autor
Miles Allinson was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1981. He is a writer and an artist. His first novel, Fever of Animals, won the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and the 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for People's Choice. (Bowker Author Biography)
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All those of us who have lost a parent know the anguish of wanting to ask just one more question. I lost both my parents within 18 months of each other just a few years ago and I still feel new to this grief thing, so I'm not sure of this... but I think that the desire to ask is not really about knowing something that we neglected to ask, it's more about wanting to have them back. We think that knowing the parent's past will somehow anchor us, but I suspect that the sense of feeling adrift isn't resolved by facts and information. I kept thinking about this as I read Miles Allinson's absorbing new novel In Moonland.
This is how it begins:
At the time, speculation about the crash involved a suspicion that Vince was trying to crash and claim the car insurance. No one really thought then that he was trying to kill himself. But as the years go by, Joe is not so sure.
Joe's father Vincent was a difficult blend of fond father and angry man, prone to outbursts of violence and fury. His mother isn't forthcoming about why this might be so, and so Joe (who narrates most of this story) knows very little about the man.
When he's too immature and selfish to do his share of parenting, Joe becomes a father himself and this is the catalyst for a renewed interest in his father's life. The poignant irony is that his quest to find out more about the life of his own absent parent, makes him an absent parent to his daughter Sylvie. Her narrative in the last part of the book takes place in a ghastly climate-changed future, and it is unbearably sad. It's a vivid wake-up call to everyone about the future of the planet that future generations will have to inhabit, unless action is taken now.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/22/in-moonland-by-miles-allinson/… (mehr)
This is how it begins:
In March 1996, a few months before he drove into a tram stop, my father bought an old Ford Torino with the money he'd won on a horse called Holy Moly. He was a fast, erratic driver, and it made him happy for a while, that car — the roar of it, the faded yellow phoenix on the black bonnet, the way the road seemed to open up for him. He hated traffic, but when all the lights are green, you can slide through the universe like a spirit without a body. Then things started to go wrong, and he had to spend a lot of money trying to fix them.
I was seventeen years old when it happened. (p.3)
At the time, speculation about the crash involved a suspicion that Vince was trying to crash and claim the car insurance. No one really thought then that he was trying to kill himself. But as the years go by, Joe is not so sure.
... my father died before we could ask him what he'd been thinking. But I also know that it's possible to think or feel a number of contradictory things at the same time and to act decisively anyway. Maybe he didn't know which of the possible outcomes he preferred, death or insurance, maybe they were both okay in that moment, and what he really wanted was the thrill of sudden fate bearing down on him again. I think he had been unhappy for most of my life. (pp.4-5)
Joe's father Vincent was a difficult blend of fond father and angry man, prone to outbursts of violence and fury. His mother isn't forthcoming about why this might be so, and so Joe (who narrates most of this story) knows very little about the man.
When he's too immature and selfish to do his share of parenting, Joe becomes a father himself and this is the catalyst for a renewed interest in his father's life. The poignant irony is that his quest to find out more about the life of his own absent parent, makes him an absent parent to his daughter Sylvie. Her narrative in the last part of the book takes place in a ghastly climate-changed future, and it is unbearably sad. It's a vivid wake-up call to everyone about the future of the planet that future generations will have to inhabit, unless action is taken now.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/22/in-moonland-by-miles-allinson/… (mehr)
Enjoyed as an audio book on a road trip.
I started enjoying this book as a searingly frank autobiography, until, about 75% through, I found the the Romanian surrealist artist at the centre of the book was fictional - making me realise that what was fictional versus real was way more ambiguous than I had been expecting.
This is a very good book, with compelling story telling, artfully disguised as high literature. I also think it might be more a book for male readers, with depictions of relations being, not macho, but perceived from a male perspective.
Well worth reading.… (mehr)
I started enjoying this book as a searingly frank autobiography, until, about 75% through, I found the the Romanian surrealist artist at the centre of the book was fictional - making me realise that what was fictional versus real was way more ambiguous than I had been expecting.
This is a very good book, with compelling story telling, artfully disguised as high literature. I also think it might be more a book for male readers, with depictions of relations being, not macho, but perceived from a male perspective.
Well worth reading.… (mehr)
Miles, a failed artist and narrator of this meditation on life, is on a quest to find out what happened to an obscure Romanian surrealist painter, Emil Bafdescu. It is a journey that takes him from Melbourne to Romania and Germany. The quest is the loose thread through this collection of reflections, flashbacks and reminices.
Allinson has written an unconventional novel that seems a conversation Miles is having with himself about his father, girlfriend, Alice, and Bafdescu.
Miles returns to Melbourne from Europe at the age of 27 to be with his dying father in the opening chapter. He thinks about his father – the first of many thoughts – described visually and skilfully. The writing carries the novel.
Part art history lesson, part memoir, part love story, this novel isn’t quite any of these things. The narrative is disjointed and hard to follow. The various flashbacks didn’t propel the story and some didn’t seem to fit, such as the detailed description of the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena. The gory detail was not consistent with the rest of the novel.
I found I didn’t care about the characters or what happened to them and the quest to find Bafdescu was not satisfying.
… (mehr)
Allinson has written an unconventional novel that seems a conversation Miles is having with himself about his father, girlfriend, Alice, and Bafdescu.
Miles returns to Melbourne from Europe at the age of 27 to be with his dying father in the opening chapter. He thinks about his father – the first of many thoughts – described visually and skilfully. The writing carries the novel.
Part art history lesson, part memoir, part love story, this novel isn’t quite any of these things. The narrative is disjointed and hard to follow. The various flashbacks didn’t propel the story and some didn’t seem to fit, such as the detailed description of the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena. The gory detail was not consistent with the rest of the novel.
I found I didn’t care about the characters or what happened to them and the quest to find Bafdescu was not satisfying.
… (mehr)
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A failed artist becomes obsessed with an obscure Romanian surrealist after his father's death. While he seeks to find out more of the Romanian painter, he also reflects on the way he and his former partner broke up.
This is the kind of turgid angst that Australian writers tend to churn out when they are trying to be considered "serious" by their peers.… (mehr)