What do you think?
Rate this book
Lunation
LUNATION is a literary thriller set in a world where truth, fiction and character are merging and unstable. It takes the reader into an underworld of Government censorship, madness, fear and sex. LUNATION is about the erotic relationship between a reader and writer. It asks you, the Reader to get into bed with the Writer and breathe in the danger of that union.
Isabella Luce is a Sydney journalist who is put under surveillance by the Howard Government for trying to tell the story of Luna, a young girl from Basra who is held in detention. The novel charts Isabella’s subsequent psychic disintegration, taking the reader on a paranoid journey into the confined mind and the stories that haunt that mind. It is also a love story about a scared girl seeking a mother and a lonely woman seeking a daughter. It is about the importance of real connections in a cold, new disposable world where love and sex are found online and thrown away as quickly as possible.
LUNATION is told in frames of points of view, prose, documentary, afterimages and poetry and fragments into ghost stories of ‘mad women’ such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Yoko Ono, Sylvia Plath and Janet Frame. The ghosts that inhabit the walls of prisons, literature and the mind vie for attention in a hurly burly of urgent narrative reminiscent of Milan Kundera, Jeanette Winterson or Michael Ondaatje.
LUNATION asks the reader to explore the edges of the information we are given and the greyness between fiction and fact. It is the story of a mad nation, complicit in crimes by remaining willingly ignorant and accepting the printed word as truth. It is about the stories we tell ourselves in order to feel free and asks if freedom is ever really possible.
Isabella Luce is a Sydney journalist who is put under surveillance by the Howard Government for trying to tell the story of Luna, a young girl from Basra who is held in detention. The novel charts Isabella’s subsequent psychic disintegration, taking the reader on a paranoid journey into the confined mind and the stories that haunt that mind. It is also a love story about a scared girl seeking a mother and a lonely woman seeking a daughter. It is about the importance of real connections in a cold, new disposable world where love and sex are found online and thrown away as quickly as possible.
LUNATION is told in frames of points of view, prose, documentary, afterimages and poetry and fragments into ghost stories of ‘mad women’ such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Yoko Ono, Sylvia Plath and Janet Frame. The ghosts that inhabit the walls of prisons, literature and the mind vie for attention in a hurly burly of urgent narrative reminiscent of Milan Kundera, Jeanette Winterson or Michael Ondaatje.
LUNATION asks the reader to explore the edges of the information we are given and the greyness between fiction and fact. It is the story of a mad nation, complicit in crimes by remaining willingly ignorant and accepting the printed word as truth. It is about the stories we tell ourselves in order to feel free and asks if freedom is ever really possible.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published February 28, 2019
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 4, 2021
AMAZING book - I read it last year and forgot to review it. It's been on my mind during this current lockdown in Sydney. It's frighteningly topical in this atmosphere of fear and paranoia and distrust — a brilliant thriller.
December 5, 2021
I really didn't get it. It made me depressed and the writing was very violent - with no point to prove. I feel the character's mental health has been worn down by society to the point where she is not living in reality anymore. There was a lot of comparisons of the author to famous women in society that have been in psychiatric care - I'm not sure if this was a grand delusion as part of the characters mental health troubles or if she was trying to reach a deeper meaning. Apart from finding some new reading materials and helping me get over a breakup because of how dark this book was, I didn't enjoy this novel. It made me very, very depressed and there were absolutely no trigger warnings for rape scenes. In fact, the word rape and fuck were casually thrown around as if it was nothing, which didn't sit right with me. Even if the author was trying to show how careless people can treat the act, she perpetuated the same stereotype by writing about it so carelessly in her book. I just really felt this book was scarring and I don't know what sort of person would enjoy this serious, self-indulgent prose.
April 27, 2019
A beautifully crafted novel which reads in the same way as we dream, in the same way we remember our dreams, in non-linear fragments with ambiguity in search of meaning.
As Reader, I could not help but lay upon Bell's frames my own memories, my own experiences, and my own dreams to find my own meaning. It's an incredibly intimate, powerful, and poetic book that will be unique to each individual reading it.
Lunation's pointed messages must be heard. How can we continue to treat poor lost souls as disposable pawns for political gains in such cruel ways?
"The sun will meet the moon; each is on their respective path, irrespective of us."
- Teresa Bell, Lunation
As Reader, I could not help but lay upon Bell's frames my own memories, my own experiences, and my own dreams to find my own meaning. It's an incredibly intimate, powerful, and poetic book that will be unique to each individual reading it.
Lunation's pointed messages must be heard. How can we continue to treat poor lost souls as disposable pawns for political gains in such cruel ways?
"The sun will meet the moon; each is on their respective path, irrespective of us."
- Teresa Bell, Lunation
January 18, 2022
Woah --
Well, this was certainly unlike anything I've ever read. Transcending genre, I would loosely describe this as a thriller: the fragmented prose interspersed with poetry and glimpses of parallel worlds. Bell breaks the fourth wall, dragging the reader in and out of the narrative, which blurs the line between fiction and reality. Fascinating.
It made me think very deeply about children in detention and our embarrassing, despicable treatment of asylum seekers in this country.
Well, this was certainly unlike anything I've ever read. Transcending genre, I would loosely describe this as a thriller: the fragmented prose interspersed with poetry and glimpses of parallel worlds. Bell breaks the fourth wall, dragging the reader in and out of the narrative, which blurs the line between fiction and reality. Fascinating.
It made me think very deeply about children in detention and our embarrassing, despicable treatment of asylum seekers in this country.
January 5, 2024
Interesting and enthralling at times, not sure if the form really works but I demolished the latter half in one sitting… while at the tennis!
September 23, 2025
fue un fic de crepúsculo que leí JJAJAJA Y DIOS, LES REQUETEJURO ES MI FIC FAVORITO DE TODOS LOS QUE HE LEIDO EN ESTOS CINCO O CUATRO AÑOS
https://www.wattpad.com/1374007364-cr...
segunda vez, wey no saben como me encanta, mi favorito hoy siempre
tercera vez!!
https://www.wattpad.com/1374007364-cr...
segunda vez, wey no saben como me encanta, mi favorito hoy siempre
tercera vez!!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews