'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)
'The narrator of Libby Angel’s autofiction novel Where I Slept is an entropic force. A self-described poet, she dances on a razor’s edge between destitution and transcendence: busking and bin-diving, sleeping in filthy toilets on train carriages—a neo-vagabond of sorts. Moving between government subsidised flats and boarding houses, squats and brothels, she propels herself into counterculture Melbourne from a regional centre she calls Tidy Town. She doesn’t tell her artist friends she grew up there, remaining a mystery to her cohabitors as they drink and take drugs, sleep too much or not at all, paint mandalas on ceilings, put on shows in decommissioned factories. Artifice and artistry, pleasure and pain collide as we follow Angel’s protagonist through a series of evictions.' (Introduction)
'Where I Slept opens with an ending. The nameless narrator, a twenty-something woman, is leaving her rural hometown and the boarding house where she lived, for new adventures in the big smoke – but not before daubing ‘sentimentality is the enemy of truth’ on the front gate of her soon-to-be former university. That proverb proves prophetic as the narrator establishes a new life in Melbourne’s inner city. This is the 1990s, just before gentrification had gained ascendance, when the area still had a ‘bohemian’ feel. The narrator drifts through sharehouses where rent goes unpaid and housemates are replaced frequently. She frequents seedy bars where strangers shout her drinks, and exhibitions where free booze flows.' (Introduction)
'Where I Slept opens with an ending. The nameless narrator, a twenty-something woman, is leaving her rural hometown and the boarding house where she lived, for new adventures in the big smoke – but not before daubing ‘sentimentality is the enemy of truth’ on the front gate of her soon-to-be former university. That proverb proves prophetic as the narrator establishes a new life in Melbourne’s inner city. This is the 1990s, just before gentrification had gained ascendance, when the area still had a ‘bohemian’ feel. The narrator drifts through sharehouses where rent goes unpaid and housemates are replaced frequently. She frequents seedy bars where strangers shout her drinks, and exhibitions where free booze flows.' (Introduction)
'The narrator of Libby Angel’s autofiction novel Where I Slept is an entropic force. A self-described poet, she dances on a razor’s edge between destitution and transcendence: busking and bin-diving, sleeping in filthy toilets on train carriages—a neo-vagabond of sorts. Moving between government subsidised flats and boarding houses, squats and brothels, she propels herself into counterculture Melbourne from a regional centre she calls Tidy Town. She doesn’t tell her artist friends she grew up there, remaining a mystery to her cohabitors as they drink and take drugs, sleep too much or not at all, paint mandalas on ceilings, put on shows in decommissioned factories. Artifice and artistry, pleasure and pain collide as we follow Angel’s protagonist through a series of evictions.' (Introduction)
