Published: 10 December 2023 (print)/7 June 2024 (audio) 
Publisher: Independently Published/Independently Published
Pages: 519/12 hrs and 53 mins
Narrator: Larre Bildeston
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Fiction
★ ★ ★ ★ – 4 Stars
On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.
Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:
- Get a pet dog
- Find a friend. Just one. Not too intense.
As Sam comes to terms with the shameful family secrets revealed in a series of letters left to him by his deceased uncle, Sam falls in love again: first with his adopted poodle-cross, and then, much more slowly, with a kind and generous trans woman from his tennis club.
Reina is so visibly and proudly queer Sam can’t imagine the two of them share a single thing in common. If only humans came with a guide book…
From the start of the story I was drawn in and Biildeston’s writing keeps you engaged in the story even if it is a slow introduction. You never feel bored waiting for the story to happen because the story is happening. Sean is telling us his story and the writing feels so natural and comfortable you happily read on as the story continues. It’s so effortless two hours easily pass and you’re continuously engaged in Sean’s life.
I picked this book up on the basis it was on a LGBTQIA book list and was surprised to find it was Autralian/Aotearoan so there was an added bonus. I feel like the Oceania LGBTQIA rep doesn’t get promoted as much so it was a great discovery.
The story offers a curious reflection of early 90s Australia – about friendships and high school, but also about self-discovery and identity. There is also a great exploration of Wellington as Sam’s new home and it’s refreshing to read about places closer to home.
The time jumps are well placed and Bildeston weaves them through the present day nicely, with year markers to break it up clearly but also to give a great backstory after we’ve been introduced to present day Sam.
It doesn’t take long before you get caught up in Sam’s high school years and through his twenties and forget this started woth a msyetrious unopened letter. It’s not until a few key lines here and there so you remember there is a family secret looming overhead. It isn’t hanging over the story though, but it is well done how Bildeston always remembed it’s there without it being an unspoken mystery that derails the story.
Sam’s journey is believable and his own anxieties and justifications makes things make sense in his mind; his curiosities, his strange feelings, and his attempts at gaining information make him create his own assumptions.
I’d argue that Sam is also aromantic as well as asexual given his descriptions over his feelings towards Lisa and uncertainty of romance but that isn’t mentioned in the book so take that as a reader’s interpretation.
The big secret comes to light eventually and admittedly it is dark. Family history is messy and it’s best going in knowing there’s some dark, uncomfortable, and taboo topics but Bildeston handles it incredibly well with how it’s revealed.
I loved going on this journey with Sam and I loved that everything felt equal and nothing took over the story. From the looming secret, to Sam’s journey, his goals and his friendship, and the gradual backstory ot balanced beautifully.
The characters are unique and I liked how Sam interacted with different people in his life. The relationship with his old friends as well as his ex-wife felt real and even if it was hard at times with their assumptions and comments they come from misguided good intent.
It’s probably not the perfect representation of the LGBTQIA community if you nit-pick, but no one experience is the same as anyone else’s so nothing ever will be. Reina infodumps a bit on Sam and the reader and there’s some terminology that gets introduced but with a deep inner search for identity I can see Bildeston trying to give Sam the best understanding, plus Reina is already set up as her own character so it isn’t entirely unrealistic this is how she approaches identity since she is so experienced and set in her own life.
Overall, I loved this book. I loved the characters and the story and the different type of story that is a refreshing take on identity and friendships and facing things in your past.
You can purchase The Space Ace of Mangleby Flat via the following
