First Name Second Name traverses an Australian-Chinese family tree, finding pivotal, resonant moments in intersecting migration stories, from the experiences of a 19th century Chinese labourer on the goldfields of North Queensland to his descendant’s reckoning with sexual and racial identity in contemporary Brisbane and London.
These historical snapshots are counterpointed by a strange, other-worldly pilgrimage up the coast of Queensland that involves protagonist Stephen Bolin’s posthumous ‘migration’. Somehow, following a kind of catastrophic incident on his timeline, Stephen has been reanimated as a kind of vampiric zombie – a ‘jiangshi’ to be precise – compelled by inscrutable, supernatural forces that wish to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland.
Coalescing around themes of travel, migration, journeying (literally and emotionally) toward belonging –claiming identity and peace – the book is particularly effective in elegantly capturing a vivid sense of physical and historical place.
Whether surveying the disruptions caused by Pauline Hanson’s 1996 maiden House of Representatives speech, offering perspectives of Queensland witnessed by various travellers or exploring the way Stephen’s life prior to his death was marked by a struggle to ‘come out’ to his conservative father, the book hums with a quiet authority about the shifting physical and emotional landscapes confronting the migrant.
Though it has horror elements, the novel refuses to exploit the tension that may rise from its genre trappings. Even if undead-Stephen occasionally surrenders to his gruesome vampiric urges at the expense of random victims, his quest is diffused with a sense of ironic flatness, complementing the novel’s overall meditative, rather dispassionate, feel.
Nor does the book offer the sort of emotional catharsis seen in family sagas elsewhere, preferring to emphasise the difficulty of the questions it raises, the way they are passed down through generations and the inevitable role of mortality in providing some kind of resolution to the individual.
As with other books that delve into autofiction, the lines between fiction and fact can be blurred. However, MinOn has been clear elsewhere how an amalgamation of names informed his own ancestry – in fact learning of this fact was the inspiration behind the novel (and its title).
Meanwhile, parallels and echoes occurring within the novel, between time, space and generations, are effectively drawn – a Scottish ancestor, for example, finds herself on the margins of her own society to the extent she comes to believe “she was the family’s walking ghost”. Ultimately, passages describing undead-Stephen’s stumbling through the night are movingly and intriguingly contrasted with those showing his previous stumbling emotional journey (while very much alive) toward reconciling issues of family, race and sexuality.
As themes of loss, responsibility and lineage become overt, MinOn’s prose can sometimes feel like it’s striving for clarity. An expository quality emerges that can dilute the compellingly oblique vibe of the book as a whole.
While it may cause frustration to those looking for more emotionally satisfying outcomes (even genre specific ones – perhaps via frenetic martial arts used to combat jiangshi in various Hong Kong horror flicks), MinOn’s novel commits to avoiding pat or too-literal solutions for the pain and disconnection that have caused Stephen’s body to rise from its deathbed.
Read: Book review: Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy
We’re reminded that the next generation will also undertake internal and external journeys to find belonging in this novel, which is beautifully, quietly haunting.
First Name Second Name, Steve MinON
Publisher: UQP
ISBN: 978 0 7022 6880 9
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272pp
Release Date: 4 March 2025
RRP: $32.99
