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Datsun Angel: A true-story adventure inside the savage heart of 1980s Australia
Datson Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the dark heart of 1980s a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today.EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK HAPPENED . . .At seventeen, aching to begin her adult life, Anna Broinowski is precocious, naïve and in her first year of Arts/Law at Sydney University. Anna's already convinced she knows how the world works, but O week changes that. She watches Australia's drunk future captains of industry terrorise freshers and the Wesley grapevine starts buzzing with reports that a Sancta Sophia first-year has been gangbanged by the St Paul's seniors, who pinioned her to the rose garden lawn with croquet hoops.Nothing is what she thought it'd be . . . until the Sydney Uni Dramatic Society (SUDS) leads Anna to her people. New dreams are made. Acting, playing violin, auditioning for NIDA, losing her virginity. And then Peisley, a gentle giant with calves as muscly as the Hulk's, talks of a hitchhiking trip up north. And, after agreeing on three rules - Never split up. Remain platonic. Accept every lift that gets them closer to Darwin - Anna decides to go.Hitchhiking the highways leads her to a dystopian dustbowl of raging paranoia and ghastly beauty, a flyblown asylum where outsiders must adapt or perish, and women teeter on an existential knife-edge, between hatred and annihilation. Anna's is a tale of danger, unravelling sanity and blossoming love. It details the extreme things that happen when urban feminism is plucked from the Ivory Tower and forced to confront the toxic misogyny in the guts of the Australian soul. In her travels, Anna will learn that the line between victim and survivor can be as cruel as luck and as random as a shiny blue Datson on a red dirt road.Based on her battered travel diary, Datsun Angel is a riveting and darkly funny true story of a sex, drugs and violence-fuelled adventure through the brutal 1980s Australian outback. It is a feminist Mad Max, told through a #MeToo filter.
- GenresMemoir
244 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 27, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 10, 2024
I found this book fascinating. It seems crazy now for someone to hitchhike from Sydney to Darwin and back but they did! The misogyny and violence of the outback is palpable. Definitely hilarious, terrifying and fun (as said by Anna Funder). How people managed to drink that much and take that many drugs and still survive remains a mystery to me! The feminist thread throughout the narrative is spot on. Lots of great quotes too.
April 28, 2024
I so enjoyed this memoir. I am of a similar vintage to the writer and loved being whirled back to the 1980s, to university life and to the thrill and danger of hitchhiking.
If you were a youngster in the 1980s, you will enjoy this book and find much to resonate with; the music, the pubs, the rampant sexism.
Datsun Angel starts with our young heroine aged 17 and just starting at Sydney uni, with all the hazing and class differences that involved. Anna wrote this memoir using her diaries and the young Anna she reveals is full of hope, intelligence and passion.
Sydney Uni does not live up to her hopes (and yes, Anna, you should have gone to Oxford. I was there 1983 - 1987 - no hazing at all!). The Sydney Uni Dramatic Society is where she finds her people, and she throws herself in.
The main part of the memoir is a hitch hiking road trip from Sydney to Darwin and back. This trip brings outback characters, hope, despair, a very close rape/murder call, and then love blossoms amidst the exotic blooms of Darwin. As a mother now, I read this section with my heart in my mouth, things could have been much, much darker. Lots of drinking, drugs and sex are described.... very 1980s indeed!
This is a coming of age tale, as well as a road trip narrative. I adored the self-critical, exuberant young heroine, so clever and committed, and so open and honest. Time to get back to my own 1980s diaries.
We leave young Anna as she is about to start at NIDA, a much wiser and more experienced young woman, ready to forge ahead.
If you were a youngster in the 1980s, you will enjoy this book and find much to resonate with; the music, the pubs, the rampant sexism.
Datsun Angel starts with our young heroine aged 17 and just starting at Sydney uni, with all the hazing and class differences that involved. Anna wrote this memoir using her diaries and the young Anna she reveals is full of hope, intelligence and passion.
Sydney Uni does not live up to her hopes (and yes, Anna, you should have gone to Oxford. I was there 1983 - 1987 - no hazing at all!). The Sydney Uni Dramatic Society is where she finds her people, and she throws herself in.
The main part of the memoir is a hitch hiking road trip from Sydney to Darwin and back. This trip brings outback characters, hope, despair, a very close rape/murder call, and then love blossoms amidst the exotic blooms of Darwin. As a mother now, I read this section with my heart in my mouth, things could have been much, much darker. Lots of drinking, drugs and sex are described.... very 1980s indeed!
This is a coming of age tale, as well as a road trip narrative. I adored the self-critical, exuberant young heroine, so clever and committed, and so open and honest. Time to get back to my own 1980s diaries.
We leave young Anna as she is about to start at NIDA, a much wiser and more experienced young woman, ready to forge ahead.
June 10, 2024
I first encountered this author as a film student at uni and her readings (if you know, you know) and was surprised that she had a memoir out. Australia in the 80s was a whole different ball game, and loads of eccentrics in all levels of society. Luckily she survived her more perilous encounters and lived to tell her story and publish a few academic tomes in between....
October 30, 2024
1980s Australia. Uni student Broinowski and one of her friends have a crack at hitchhiking from Sydney to Darwin - a journey into the heart of darkness - Jack Kerouac style. The first lift from the Datsun Angel is a blessing from the Gods a promising sign for a good trip. Unfortunately, toxic misogyny and violence quickly follow. A darkly funny memoir.
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April 22, 2024Heard about it here: https://bookdout.wordpress.com/2024/0...
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September 2, 2024wild
December 14, 2024
I don’t have a lot to say about Datsun Angel, a coming-of-age memoir from Australian writer and award winning filmmaker Anna Broinowski, drawn from her teenage diaries. I’m a little younger than the author, but not so much that her experiences in the 1980’s surprised me, as the saying goes, ‘it was a different time’.
That said, Anna’s story is confronting, a reminder that the rosy glow of nostalgia obscures all manner of darkness. From the misogynistic culture of university (that hasn’t abated completely but which is less overtly indulged), to the encouraged excess of alcohol and drug-taking, to the almost omnipresent threat of casual physical and sexual violence, young women were vulnerable in ways that aren’t quite as prevalent today.
There’s an authenticity to Anna’s voice that I appreciated but also found off-putting in some way. The mixture of youthful arrogance and ignorance is hard to tolerate with the benefit of hindsight, and terrifying as a parent of teenagers who are of a similar age.
Darkly funny, honest and challenging, Datsun Angel is a true adventure of life and survival.
That said, Anna’s story is confronting, a reminder that the rosy glow of nostalgia obscures all manner of darkness. From the misogynistic culture of university (that hasn’t abated completely but which is less overtly indulged), to the encouraged excess of alcohol and drug-taking, to the almost omnipresent threat of casual physical and sexual violence, young women were vulnerable in ways that aren’t quite as prevalent today.
There’s an authenticity to Anna’s voice that I appreciated but also found off-putting in some way. The mixture of youthful arrogance and ignorance is hard to tolerate with the benefit of hindsight, and terrifying as a parent of teenagers who are of a similar age.
Darkly funny, honest and challenging, Datsun Angel is a true adventure of life and survival.
November 17, 2024
This was hard-hitting, and though I read it eight months ago, I still think about it. What a memoir!
Datsun Angel is a deep dive look into the brutal side of the 80s with toxic-beyond-belief university culture, a very scary (bloody still having nightmares about it) road trip and how the author somehow lives through a very self destructive time.
For starters —hitchhiking through the desert in the 80s (or ever)—I mean, wtf!?! The writing is beautiful, colourful and evocative. I think that’s what kept me going because I really was traumatised by what this girl… well, woman, went through. It certainly ripped my rosy coloured memories of the 80s out of my memory, and stamped all over them.
But regardless , I’m so glad I read it. A true eye opener and an important cautionary tale.
My favourite line: (too many to choose, by the way, but here’s a gem) ‘The hippies drift off to the shadowy edges of the dome, enfolded in the soft murmurs of their dreaming children.’ How luscious is that!
This book is full of achingly beautiful prose just like it. Heaven. 😌
Datsun Angel is a deep dive look into the brutal side of the 80s with toxic-beyond-belief university culture, a very scary (bloody still having nightmares about it) road trip and how the author somehow lives through a very self destructive time.
For starters —hitchhiking through the desert in the 80s (or ever)—I mean, wtf!?! The writing is beautiful, colourful and evocative. I think that’s what kept me going because I really was traumatised by what this girl… well, woman, went through. It certainly ripped my rosy coloured memories of the 80s out of my memory, and stamped all over them.
But regardless , I’m so glad I read it. A true eye opener and an important cautionary tale.
My favourite line: (too many to choose, by the way, but here’s a gem) ‘The hippies drift off to the shadowy edges of the dome, enfolded in the soft murmurs of their dreaming children.’ How luscious is that!
This book is full of achingly beautiful prose just like it. Heaven. 😌
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews