'A breathtaking new novel from the Stella Prize-winning author of The Strays.
'In the fall of 2011, a heartbroken young man flees Australia for the USA. Landing in the excessive, uncanny-familiar glamour and plenitude of New York City, Will makes a vow to say yes to everything that comes his way. By fate or random chance, Will's journey takes him deep into the American heartland where he meets Wayne Gage, a fast-living, troubled Vietnam veteran, would-be spirit guide and collector of exotic animals. These two men in crisis form an unlikely friendship, but Will has no idea just how close to the edge Wayne truly is.
'Wild Abandon is a headlong tumble through the falling world of end-days capitalism, a haunting, hyperreal snapshot of our own strange times. We read with increasing horror and denial as we approach the cataclysmic conclusion of Will's American odyssey, dreading what is galloping towards us, but utterly unable to look away.
'This lyrical and devastating new novel from the Stella Prize-winning author of The Strays offers us startling and profound visions of the world and our place in it.' (Publication summary)
Book It In : Emily Bitto
Zoya Patel
(presenter),
2022
25160150
2022
single work
podcast
'In a road trip prompted by an Australian man’s imagination of America, Emily Bitto explores the literary trope of the masculine hero’s quest – through her novel Wild Abandon.'
Source: Book It In.
'Discussing the challenges of setting fiction in his adopted America, expatriate Peter Carey recalled a comment by one of his students: ‘when you change countries you lose your peripheral vision.’ Working up the nerve to take stock of the ‘democratic experiment’ in Parrott and Olivier in America (2009), Carey sensibly muffled any missteps in the picaresque blunderings of two fish-out-of-water nineteenth-century Europeans, a myopic nobleman and his roguish footman. Though it’s 2011 when 22-year old Melburnian Will lugs his backpack from the airport carousel, Emily Bitto’s second novel Wild Abandon adopts a similar strategy: figuring its millennial hipster as a quixotic adventurer, charting the (Introduction)distance between his American dream and obstinate reality for comic juxtaposition.' (Introduction)
'Paul Daley talks to Marion Frith about how she wrote a novel about life after loss and human resilience in the midst of trauma – by telling the story through an unlikely friendship between two fictional characters'
'In a road trip prompted by an Australian man’s imagination of America, Emily Bitto explores the literary trope of the masculine hero’s quest – through her novel Wild Abandon'
'Bitto's new novel is about biting hedonism and its unpalatable aftermath.'
'Emily Bitto won the Stella Prize in 2015 for her first novel The Strays. Her second, Wild Abandon, was worth the wait.'
'Emily Bitto’s first novel since her 2015 Stella Prize-winning debut, The Strays, is the coming-of-age story of 22-year-old Will. It is 2011 and, reeling from a bad break-up, Will flees Melbourne for the United States in search of “experience” and “the grand American ideal of self-determination”.' (Introduction)
'Joe Exotic. Carole Baskin. Tiger King. There was a moment in early 2020 when these were names to conjure with; when a plague-ridden world became fascinated with the outlandish behaviour of these larger-than-life Americans and their unbelievably legal menageries of ‘exotic’ animals. Now, as we inch closer to ‘Covid-normal’, revisiting this surreal world through Emily Bitto’s exuberantly baroque second novel, Wild Abandon, is an unsettling experience.' (Introduction)
At Home with Emily Bitto
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23443379
2021
single work
podcast
interview
'Emily Bitto is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her debut novel, The Strays, was the winner of the 2015 Stella Prize, and in 2021 she released her second novel, Wild Abandon.
'Her fiction, poetry and non-fiction has appeared in various publications, including Meanjin, The Age, the Monthly, the Saturday Paper, The Big Issue, and The Sydney Morning Herald. She is also the co-owner of Carlton wine bar Heartattack and Vine.' (Production summary)
'In a road trip prompted by an Australian man’s imagination of America, Emily Bitto explores the literary trope of the masculine hero’s quest – through her novel Wild Abandon'
'Paul Daley talks to Marion Frith about how she wrote a novel about life after loss and human resilience in the midst of trauma – by telling the story through an unlikely friendship between two fictional characters'
Book It In : Emily Bitto
Zoya Patel
(presenter),
2022
25160150
2022
single work
podcast
'In a road trip prompted by an Australian man’s imagination of America, Emily Bitto explores the literary trope of the masculine hero’s quest – through her novel Wild Abandon.'
Source: Book It In.
