We Ate The Road Like Vultures by Lynnette Lounsbury, Review
Lynnette Lounsbury’s We Ate The Road Like Vultures was one of our dozen Top Aussie Reads of 2016.
We Ate The Road Like Vultures Synopsis:
Lulu, a teenage Australian runaway on an unlikely mission, knows bullshit when she hears it and she’s hearing it from the two ‘ornery old geezers she discovers living with an Alaskan moose named Capote, and Salinger, a suicidal circus elephant, on a remote Mexican haçienda. She is on a quest that has taken her halfway around the world—hitching rides, sleeping at truck stops and generally trying to evade Interpol—to prove that ‘Chicco’ and ‘Carousel’, with their stained kaftans and hesitant prostates, were once better known as Jack Kerouac and his muse, Neal Cassady.
(Inkerman & Blunt, 2016)
Genre: Literature, Action-Adventure, Drama, Humour
Disclosure: If you click a link in this post we may earn a small commission to help offset our running costs.
BOOK REVIEW
Lynnette Lounsbury’s We Ate The Road Like Vultures is so many kinds of wonderful. I was mesmerised from the very first line,
I knew it was the right place as soon as I saw the giant bull-moose up to its hairy, antique carpet haunches in a memo-inflated children’s swimming pool.
That’s right a moose, and an elephant, and many other things that at first seem out of place. But that’s the whole point… why not? What treasures might we all find if we look that little bit deeper and ask the questions others dare not?
Lounsbury’s characters are luminous… an addictive mix of farce and philosophy, caring for people but not for their egos. Our endearing narrator on this wild ride is Lulu — a bookish soul wise beyond her years trapped in the body of a feisty late teen.
But it is not just Lounsbury’s storyline that beguiled me, her prose did too… peppered with refreshing descriptions, metaphor and symbolism.
Inkerman & Blunt is a boutique Australian press ‘dedicated to publishing books of originality, intelligence and beauty: fiction, nonfiction and poetry’. Bravo I&B…
We Ate The Road Like Vultures is strikingly original, intelligent (let me count the ways) and beautiful in its celebration of living. A cult classic in the making.
BOOK RATING: The Story 5 / 5 ; The Writing 4.5 / 5 — Overall 4.75
Get your copy of We Ate The Road Like Vultures from:
About the Author, Lynnette Lounsbury
Lynnette Lounsbury, is a writer, lecturer, martial artist, traveller, and occasional poet. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and on the NSW North Coast but now lives in Sydney. She currently teaches writing and ancient history at Avondale College and is Senior Editor at the student travel blog, Ytravel. Her first book, Afterworld (Allen&Unwin 2014) was released for the young adult market in 2014. We Ate the Road like Vultures is her first novel for adults.
Speaking to the Guardian about the inspiration for this novel, Lynnette said, “I loved the beat generation. Then I realised it has no place for women”.
International Book Giveaway
To celebrate the release of We Ate The Road Like Vultures Inkerman & Blunt have offered a paperback copy to giveaway to one lucky reader.
- open internationally
- extra entries for spreading the word via Twitter and Facebook/Google+/Webpage
- entries close 22 April 2016
- the winner will be randomly selected and must respond to my email requesting their mailing address within 5 days otherwise their prize will be forfeited and another winner selected
SORRY, ENTRIES CLOSED – Winner announced HERE.
This review counts towards my participation in the Aussie Author Challenge 2016 and the 2016 Australian Women Writers Challenge.
* My receiving a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes did not impact the expression of my honest opinions in the review above.
