Where I Slept (Libby Angel, Text)

Where I Slept, by award-winning poet and author Libby Angel, is a sharp and sobering piece of autofiction that follows a struggling, unnamed poet/artist living on the margins in 1990s Melbourne. Having been ‘spat out’ of university, the narrator moves from regional Victoria (aka Tidy Town) to ‘real life’ in (messy) Melbourne in search of life on the edge: ‘I want to live in a place where I can fall down in the street and nobody will stop to help me.’ Her life is directionless and transient, a quest for creative impulsiveness that is monotonously shackled by real-life needs like food, money and shelter. It’s a seedy, damp world of drugs, vomit, dreadlocks, alcohol, bands, escorts, hunger, more hunger, poverty and more drugs. A careless and rudderless scene, it’s also ghoulishly fascinating. Despite the novel’s cumulative hopelessness, you keep reading because the writing—and characters—are strong, honest and funny. Angel’s work shares the grittiness of Helen Garner’s writing (interesting that Monkey Grip was criticised for being autofiction before this was a thing) and the dry, black humour of Meg Mason. The narrator is commanding in her bluntness, kindness and quirkiness. Ultimately, however, Where I Slept is a bittersweet read. When, on the last page, the narrator writes ‘Happy’ on a wall, you may wonder instead if it should read ‘Fantasy’. Where I Slept is worth reading to meet the narrator and to gain an insight into a very real part of life.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Michelle Atkins is a communications professional and published educational author. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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Category: Reviews