cover image THE ADVENTURES OF MILES AND ISABEL

THE ADVENTURES OF MILES AND ISABEL

Tom Gilling, . . Atlantic Monthly, $23 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-87113-861-3

Miles and Isabel, two Australians born on the same night in 1856, lead vastly different lives that nonetheless put them on a collision course in this second novel by Gilling (The Sooterkin). As children, both idolize the country's first balloonist, Tobias Smith, their infatuation sparking a mutual thirst for adventure and flying. Miles grows up the son of an actress, traveling Australia with his mother and later as the assistant of a levitator. When he comes into possession of a journal kept by Smith, his interest in flying becomes an obsession. Isabel, the youngest daughter of a prosperous Sydney banker, refuses to follow the prescribed route her mother has laid out for her: marriage to a suitably wealthy and dull businessman. Instead, craving independence, she rebels by traveling on her own and mingling with the rougher classes at horse races and in prospecting towns. Though the novel revolves around the inevitable meeting and love affair of Miles and Isabel, their picaresque journeys are peopled with quirky characters that lend the story delicious flavor and send it off on entertaining tangents. Wolunsky, the levitator, regales his audiences with fantastically spun tales of grandly tragic attempts at flight. Isabel's uncle, Dr. Galbraith, a bit of a Victorian mad scientist, attains minor notoriety when he assembles a "Genuine English Safety Bicycle." At times, the writing takes on an almost magical sheen, particularly in passages about flying and levitation. The love story that emerges towards the end is slightly contrived, but fits perfectly with the story's lightly comic, pleasantly wistful ethos. Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda revolves around similarly grandiose 19th-century dreams, but Gilling's novel is an altogether airier affair. (Oct.)