Emily Bitto / Wildest dreams

Emily Bitto
Photo by Sarah Enticnap

Wildest dreams

Emily Bitto's second novel 

raises compelling questions 

about writing and living.

BY SAM COONEY
Summer 2021

The 25 best Australian books of 2021

We’re on Zoom. Again.

Emily Bitto and I gaze at our screens, looking at each other’s pixelated faces — very much not the same as looking into someone’s eyes — both of us occasionally sneaking glances at each other’s pixelated surroundings. I’m sitting at my dining table, kitchen in the background; Bitto is in the study of her Brunswick West home, a hot-pink Jackie Marshall tour poster stuck to the door of a vintage standalone wardrobe, reminding me of a time when musicians toured and audiences danced. Bitto’s bleached short pixie haircut is even lighter in the afternoon sun.

Emily Bitto / ‘England is not the cultural centre for Australians any more’

Australian author Emily Bitto, whose second novel, Wild Abandon,
is out now through Allen & Unwin. 
Photograph: Nicholas Purcell 

Author Emily Bitto: ‘England is not the cultural centre for Australians any more’

Stella Prize winner’s new novel with its Tiger King-style setting in rural Ohio is an exploration of hedonism in the face of capitalist decline

The 25 best Australian books of 2021

Brigid Delaney

Wed 29 Sep 2021 02.00 BST

T

he hero’s journey is a narrative device as old as storytelling itself. But what does it look like now, when we are running out of days and new places on the map? For a millennial Melbourne man, Will, the protagonist of Emily Bitto’s second novel, Wild Abandon, the hero’s journey is America.

Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto / A thrilling, irreverent take on the great American road trip

Emily Bitto

Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto – a thrilling, irreverent take on the great American road trip

Like the Great Gatsby - but less romantic and more woke – Wild Abandon follows a lonely outsider finding his place in a late-capitalism world

The 25 best Australian books of 2021

Bec Kavanagh
Thu 7 Oct 2021 17.30 BST

Emily Bitto’s Wild Abandon is a sprawling novel, easy to read, with characters that are generously written and full of life. It is easy to get lost with Will, as he flees the shame of his small-town upbringing and the heartbreak of first love, leaving Australia in search of meaning and release. But from the hedonistic indulgences of New York City to the primal wilds of Littleproud, Ohio, all Will finds beneath the fantasy of the great American road trip are shattered dreams.

Wild Abandon by Emily Britto / A clever and complex read about the abandonment of order

 

Both Emily Bitto’s novels are about the abandonment of order. 

Wild Abandon: a clever and complex read about the abandonment of order

The 25 best Australian books of 2021

By Kerryn Goldsworthy
October 8, 2021 — 4.00pm

FICTION: Wild Abandon, Emily Bitto, Allen & Unwin, $32.99

Emily Bitto’s debut novel, which won the Stella Prize in 2015, was called The Strays. This new book, her second, is called Wild Abandon, an equally suggestive but more intense and violent version of the same idea. They are both books about the abandonment of order, wherein an innocent character from an ordinary family is first attracted and then infected by perceived glamour that turns out, once experienced, to be both a driver and a product of disorder and dysfunction.

Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto / Review

 

Wild Abandon

by Emily Bitto

A breathtaking new novel from the Stella Prize-winning author of The Strays.

The 25 best Australian books of 2021

In the fall of 2011, a heartbroken young man flees Australia for the USA. Landing in the excessive, uncanny-familiar glamour and plenitude of New York City, Will makes a vow to say yes to everything that comes his way. By fate or random chance, Will's journey takes him deep into the American heartland where he meets Wayne Gage, a fast-living, troubled Vietnam veteran, would-be spirit guide and collector of exotic animals. These two men in crisis form an unlikely friendship, but Will has no idea just how close to the edge Wayne truly is.