Penguin, Australia 2026
Cover design George Saad
Cover image ‘Aloe Opuntia Polyanthos’ from Histoire des Plantes Grasses (1799) by Pierre-Joseph Redouté courtesy Creative Commons
What a gloriously happiness-inducing book this is! It is the story of Leslie and her rediscovery of a younger self who had become diminished by life.
When we meet Leslie, she is quite newly out of a 24 year marriage to physiotherapist Dennis Francis-Pester, who has left her for a young colleague Kimberley (who has excellent posture).
Leslie’s relationship with her daughter Moose is rather fraught and Leslie is in a transitional phase of uncertainty. She starts entering all manner of competitions and to her great surprise wins an all expenses paid trip for two to Las Vegas sponsored by a potato chip company.
Unfortunately, her friend Jenny is suddenly unable to go with her; the Leslie of old would probably have decided not to go alone. However, the new Leslie has decided to embrace new experiences and to be brave. She sets off on her trip and becomes Las Vegas Leslie, a woman open to adventure and a burgeoning awareness of what has been so long suppressed in herself.
She takes in her stride the relentless heat of Vegas and artificiality of the casino precinct where she stays with its constant noise and haze of cigarette smoke, and embarks on some of the pre-organised itinerary of her trip. She is soon overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape in the surrounding region, visiting The Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam and marvelling at the colours and grandeur she is suddenly aware of. She is seeing beauty everywhere, even in the most unexpected places.
Leslie also meets up with Jeff, Jenny’s brother, a childhood friend who was head over heels in love with her as a young man. When Jenny married Dennis, he took himself off to the US to pursue his career as a magician. The magic strand forms a lovely metaphor for what is happening to Leslie. She even attends Jeff’s magic show and takes further steps into the frightening unknown – playing out the major theme of risk and reward explored in this book.
It is on a day trip with Jeff to the desert when she takes in the splendour of the Double Negative sculpture and is reminded of how much she wanted to be an artist as her younger self. She waxes lyrical about the power of art in a way she had forgotten to do. Again, the metaphor is striking – the power of absence. Las Vegas Leslie is finding again the parts of her long absent and feeling their power rise.
At the end of the trip which was her competition prize, Leslie is a changed woman. She has found again the young self who loved life and decides to extend her US stay and take a solo road trip. Things that once would have seemed too terrifying to attempt become possible for Las Vegas Leslie and we have every confidence that she will, at 43 years old, ‘do this’.
Victoria Hannan has told Leslie’s story with humour and compassion, inviting us all to glory in her reclamation of self. It is a tale with which we can all identify to some extent, that need to hold the precious life-enhancing bits of ourselves and to see with blinding clarity the beauty around us.
Thank you to Penguin for my review copy and to Victoria for creating such a happiness inducing story and for speaking with me about Las Vegas Leslie and the capacity for rediscovery of the self.