The Adventures of Miles and Isabel

by Tom Gilling

Book Overview

Selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year, Tom Gilling's novel opens in a crowded playhouse in 1856 Sydney, Australia, where two spectacular lives are about to start. During her scandalous turn as Hamlet, a heavily pregnant (and unmarried) actress unexpectedly goes into labor onstage, shocking the audience. Indeed, one patrician spectator -- who is also with child -- is so moved that she too goes into labor. The babies born that...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080214019X
• ISBN13: 9780802140197
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Australian Icarus

in 1856, Miles McGinty and Isabel Dowling are born on the same day. That is the accident before fate sets in. Miles serves as medium for the levitator Zbiginil Wolunsky and thus starts his dream of flying. He grows up to be a penniless tinkerer, who refuses to give up his dream. One day he breaks his arm while helping to advertise Horatio's Boomerang Brandy. The kind man who caused the accident takes him in for the duration of recuperation. And there Miles meets Isabel.The youngest of six sisters, Isabel has had it with hand-me-downs, strictures of the household and being the last in the receiving line. So, as a tender teenager, she leaves home and travels through Australia, winding up with Uncle John - where Miles is nursing his broken arm and his dream of flying. After building all kinds of contraptions, he finally comes close to something that works. Isabel, of course, helps him and the two grow close.I will not divulge the ending because it is too beautiful to be messed with by an amateur. Mr. Gilling, who wrote the incredible "The Sooterkin", again uses his unique imagination and the beauty of his language to give us a novel that will stay in our memory for a long time and uplift our spirits.

Well Done

The Adventures of Miles and Isabel is a well-written tale of two young Australians in the 1800s, born on the same night, to utterly different lives, who are linked through their devotion to flying. Both lead unconventional lives and thier paths seem to almost cross several times in the novel before they finally meet. This novel is enjoyable and just the right length for its whimsical focus. Have fun.

I believe.

In "The Adventures of Miles and Isabel", Tom Gilling brings back the classic story of fated romance, but without any of the frivolous swooning our twenty-first century culture prefers to do without. This love story is set in the pre-aviation era of the 1850's and 60's... only it's not so much about the love between a boy and a girl as it is between a boy and a girl and their obsession with flight.Miles is an intelligent, restless boy who is bursting with the unwavering confidence of his own ideals. He is the only son of Eliza McGinty, famed Australian stage actress, who went into labor with him during her controversial rendition of Hamlet. Isabel is an independent young lady who is submissive to nothing but fate. She is very much like her progressive and headstrong mother, Lousia Dowling, who was in the audience the night Eliza fell into labor with Miles. In a manner only providence can predict, Louisa's own contractions begin as she witnesses Eliza's laboring... and so Miles and Isabel enter the world.The first two-thirds of this book set-up the inevitable meeting of the two young characters. Isabel is taken for a brief, impromptu flight in a hot air balloon by Tobias Smith, the area's first aviation entrepreneur. Several years later, Miles encounters a broken-down Mr. Smith who passes to him his personal journal full of notes and sketches of various flying machines. This is the beginning of a series of what some skeptics might call `coincidences', but what the rest of us will firmly believe is `fate' by the time the story is finished. Gilling displays a commendable amount of research in this book. His grasp of the historical facts keep the story strong and intact. The engaging dialog between his unique characters is one of the facets that keeps you glued to the page. I highly recommend this book to any creative person. It combines the perfect mix of history, human interest and fantasy that makes a book truly timeless.