AustLit

'A striking, lyrical work of autofiction that follows a struggling artist living on the margins in 1990s Melbourne.

'When he asks what kind of work I do, I tell him I am a poet.
'Poetry will break your heart,' he says.
'Or, perhaps it is the only thing that won't,' I say.

'In this startling work of autofiction the unnamed narrator plunges us headlong into 1990s Melbourne bohemia-a whirlwind of friends and strangers, decadence and despair, sex and drugs-through the places she slept- a boarding house with drug-addled landlord, share houses of aspiring artists and petty criminals, and roughing it on the streets.

'She lives for poetry and hungers for beauty, purpose and a place to anchor herself. Her voice is ironic, deadpan and darkly comic, an Artline marker her weapon of choice in expressing her presence in a city both richly accommodating and indifferent.

'Libby Angel's brilliant new work is filled with characters you'll wish you knew and those you're glad you don't. Where I Slept is an unforgettable portrait of a life on the fringes, a poem of longing and desire.'(Publication summary)

'Loretta’s mother was a trapeze artist in Europe, the star of the famed Rodzirkus circus, before she walked out on her drunken husband and his debts while on tour in Australia. But a life in 1960s suburban Adelaide was always going to be difficult, even if she does land herself the most handsome young barrister of the town, and Leda’s behaviour raises more than a few eyebrows.

'Leda’s father, handsome barrister Gilbert Lord, has no interest in his past, but hidden in a wardrobe are the journals of his ivory merchant great-great-grandfather who led an expedition to Australia’s desert interior to search for elephants.

'For Loretta, growing up in her mother’s flamboyant and often outrageous shadow, life is stifling and at times brutal. But the harder she tries to separate herself from her mother, the more she longs for her attention and love—and the more she finds that the past is inextricably woven into her own life and who she is.

'The Trapeze Act weaves stories of the circus and the doomed ivory expedition through a novel that is at once a heartbreaking tale of the search for acceptance and a celebration of the lustre and magic of life.' (Publication summary)