“A story of our hearts, all broken, full, mystifying. Observant, sublime prose.”
—Tara June Winch, author of The Yield
“Wild, tender, fatalistically hilarious, and utterly enthralling. Allinson’s complex insight and love for the people of this novel renders them as real as difficult kin and just as inescapable.”
—Josephine Rowe, author of Here Until August
“In Moonland contains everything I want from a novel. It’s heart-breaking, funny, ruthless, and in the final section takes an enormous risk that works so perfectly that any other conclusion seems impossible. I love a finely turned sentence, and this book is awash with them”
—Robert Gott, author of The Orchard Murders
“A joy to read, with its relaxed authority of tone, its complex emotional depths, and its curious, daring beauty.”
—Helen Garner
“[In Moonland is] a novel about the ways we yearn to belong; a deeply moving excavation of faith, autonomy, identity and, ultimately, mortality. Allinson writes with great warmth and insight, his exquisite prose offering light to even the darkest corners of his characters’ hearts.”
—Judges comments for The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction
“Anxious, elegiac, dreamlike … It’s really about freedom, about characters searching for something to believe in before they jettison the rest. It reads like a requiem—for family, planet, hope for the future—bittersweet and played for laughs, last drinks after the funeral … The lesson of this book about freedom might be that self-sufficiency doesn’t exist—that freedom is other people.”
—Imogen Dewey, The Guardian
“While the novel indulges in our fascination with cults, the relationships between the characters are the main drivers of the story. Each character is a seeker in their own right, and if they aren’t tapping into the mystical they are trying to unlock generational trauma. For all that, Allinson’s new novel has more in common with work by writers like Peter Carey rather than Tim Winton. It’s taut, unsentimental, thought-provoking, sad, and at times wild and gorgeous.”
—Brigid Delaney, The Guardian
“The emotional texture is compelling and ultimately quite moving. Allinson’s prose throughout is alert, nuanced and capable of great variety. It’s a formally ambitious novel, but perhaps its boldest move lies in its rejection of closure—with each new section we learn more, but feel less certain … It’s Allinson’s ability to capture the disappointments of children and the failure of parents without lazy generational summarizing that gives In Moonland its diffuse, but lingering, power.”
—Adam Rivett, Sydney Morning Herald
“[In Moonland] is beautifully told … and heart rending in its accumulation of losses that can never be retrieved and dreams that can never be realized.”
—Barry Reynolds, The Herald Sun
“[A]n ambitious and gripping story of parenthood, utopias and environmental collapse … In Moonland is an astounding book that feels so epic in scope for a novel that is only 240-odd pages long. Fans of Allinson’s first book have much to look forward to with his second, a skilful and existential examination of humanity in the Anthropocene.”
—Brad Jefferies, Books + Publishing
“A thrilling novel about filial obedience, yearning, and failing that shows three wildly different journeys, exposing the battered and bulging heart that propels each. Like the best, it has me wondering how my own heart is propelled.”
—Tim Rogers
“In Moonland is not only beautifully and fluently written, but paced with expertize and subtlety … [Miles Allinson has] the mark of an empathetic person capable of piercing artistic insight [and] In Moonland polishes this insight to jewel-like quality, and lingers, beautifully, after its plot has passed away.”
—Vanessa Francesca, ArtsHub, starred review
