The father in question,Vincent,died that day. More than 20 years later,his son Joe still lives in Melbourne,and is now a father himself. Pondering a photo of his father in front of an Indian ashram taken in the late ’70s,happier and seemingly more alive than the remote and angry man he remembers,Joe resolves to track down his father’s friends in the hope of understanding the man he once was.
For the novel’s opening 100 pages we move deftly between Joe’s daily concerns – parenting a young child,a dissolving marriage – and his growing fixation on his father’s past. His father’s friends are old hippies or failed artists for the most part who respond to Joe’s queries with either encouragement or weariness. One question leads to another,one remembrance to another figure from the past. As a picture of his father slowly forms,the local scale of his pursuit suddenly proves inadequate. To understand more,Joe must return to the country where his father once lived a wholly different life.
It’s at this point that the novel breaks from Joe’s perspective,never to return. For the remainder ofIn Moonland we jump back and forth in time,from a vividly recreated ’70s Pune to narrative tangents far removed from the novel’s suburban opening.
Its second section,a long dramatisation of Vincent’s time at an ashram,is particularly effective,capturing both the initial blokey nervousness of men far from home and the sincere change that overcomes Vincent and his friends as their rugged masculinity melts into something overwhelmed and transformative. The details throughout – well-thumbed copies ofThe Dice Man and Ram Dass’Be Here Now, the backpacker aimlessness – feel just right,and the emotional texture is compelling and ultimately quite moving.
Allinson’s prose throughout is alert,nuanced and capable of great variety. It’s a formally ambitious novel,but perhaps its boldest move lies in its rejection of closure – with each new section we learn more,but feel less certain. The novel’s protagonists move hesitantly,lose themselves,and disown their own conclusions over time – as one of Vincent’s friends puts it late in the novel,“All that stuff was finished now. It was just smoke in the head.”