Datsun Angel

by Anna Broinowski

Datson Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the savage heart of 1980s Australia: a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today.
EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK HAPPENED . . .
At seventeen, Anna Broinowski is precocious, naive and convinced she knows how the world works. But O-Week at Sydney University changes that. She's suddenly in a hyper-masculine caste system, where future captains of industry terrorise freshers and invade dorms in naked, screaming packs.
Nothing is what she thought it'd be . . . until Anna finds her people. New dreams are made. Playing violin, auditioning for NIDA, losing her virginity. Then Peisley, a gentle giant, 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 into a dystopian dustbowl on society's hard edges, where outsiders must adapt or perish, and women teeter on an existential knife edge. In this flyblown asylum, love and danger collide with the toxic misogyny in the guts of the Australian soul. 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 savage, darkly funny memoir of sex, drugs and violence-fuelled adventure through the brutal 1980s Australian outback. It is a feminist On the Road, told through a #MeToo filter.

Genres: Memoir

288 pages, Paperback

Published March 27, 2024

About the author

Australian filmmaker

Reviews

[Bronwen Heathfield]

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.

[Seana Smith]

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.

[Tess]

3.5⭐️ I wanted to read this book after hearing Anna speaking about it at Brisbane writers festival in October last year. I did enjoy parts of the book and I thought it was pretty fascinating to read about a road trip through Australia during a really significant period of time for the country... I think it fell a little bit short in terms of exploring her experience of being a female in the 80s and perhaps should have had less of a focus on her relationship with Peisley 😬

[Rania T]

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....

[Jill]

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.

[Richard Roberts]

This book made me rave to my mates, "you must read this", I hope they do. I hadn't reached the end when I was telling them, and I'd rave at them, even more now I have. Shocking? Yes. Needs to be said? Absolutely, and heard.

[Jinjer]

Heard about it here: https://bookdout.wordpress.com/2024/0...

[Brenda Rosser]

wild

[BirnitaB]

Utter crap. Gave it a red hot go, but could not finish.

[Kim Hawkins]

I think it was not what I expected!

[Alison Douglas]

3.5 stars, intelligent writing, brutal story

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out]

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.

[Lorena Otes]

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. 😌