The innate smart-arse in me wondered, as I read Fever of Animals, did a prize for best unpublished manuscript maybe mean a manuscript best left unpublished? By the time I finished the book, I'd almost concluded that was the case.

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. ( )

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. ( )

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.

I started this and thought, "Oh great, another novel/memoir about a disaffected creative dude in his late 20s/early 30s," but Allinson's writing quickly won me over. The book bleeds between time periods and locations, and you find yourself immersed in the mind of this self-absorbed, lonely, dreamer as he flips through memories and ponders where his life is going. It all sounds very self-indulgent, and it sails pretty close to the line at times, but Allinson is a really wonderful prose stylist and is refreshingly tough on his alter-ego/main character, so in the end I went along with it. In many ways it seemed like a more serious version of [b:Lion Attack!|25373768|Lion Attack!|Oliver Mol|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1429239685s/25373768.jpg|45121038] - you'll laugh much less often, but the literary ambition is cranked up to 11.

I was a bit disappointed by the lack of depth to the Alice character (the narrator's ex-girlfriend), but decided in the end that this reflected the perspective of our narrator and was intentional. ( )

Fever of Animals is a difficult book to categorise, but boy is it addictive reading! I would sit down and intend to read for 20 minutes and find myself still reading an hour later. It’s a book that has you asking questions and reflecting on your life and the world the whole way through.

I’m going to try to explain a little about the book, but it’s difficult as it goes off on different tangents – trust me though, the whole thing just works. As the reader, I wasn’t sure at times what was true (is there really a painter called Emil Bafdescu? Am I just an uncultured idiot?) and what was fiction. (I did Google Emil but couldn’t find anything – is he so underground that I am just too uncool to find him in the mainstream?) I think this is made more complex as the story is told from the first person point of view of Miles. But is it Miles the author? Or another Miles? Or a combination of the two? Anyway, the story begins as Miles is on a plane. He’s there to bury his father. He starts to reflect on a number of different things in a stream of consciousness – the death of a person who was the last one to speak that language, his failed relationship with Alice and how the surrealist painter Emil Bafdescu disappeared many years ago. After he returns home, Miles reflects on family, Melbourne and life in general. The story with Alice is told in glimpses from their meeting to the ending of their relationship. And in the background is Emil. Is it a co-incidence that Emil is a surrealist painter in this story which feels like it is slightly surreal, drifting in the breeze itself?

You may think from my description that Fever of Animals is difficult to follow. It’s not at all. It’s delightful to get caught up in Miles’ beautiful prose. It’s lyrical and beautiful yet sometimes contains such profound truths that you wonder why you haven’t thought of it before. Miles’ thoughts on grief and relationships and how they link back to Emil and that glimpse of his one painting in Melbourne are well crafted. It’s also amazingly interesting – I never thought that I would care about the searching of a particular painter. Miles the character makes it all seem worthwhile, almost a noble cause even though he freely admits he has no idea where he’s going with this! In particular, I loved Miles’ reflections on his time with Alice. They’re brutally honest and don’t always paint him in the best light but the end of their relationship is spellbinding to read, even if it’s not always comfortable.

Fever of Animals is beautiful, an almost mystical debut. Miles Allinson is clearly an author to watch for!

Thank you to Scribe Publications for this copy. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )