Gilling, Tom. The adventures of Miles and Isabel.

Grove. 198p. c2001. 0-8021-4019-X. $12.00. SA

Set in New South Wales, Australia in the mid-1800s, this flight of fancy features Miles McGinty and Isabel Dowling, whose unconventional beginnings in the Prince of Wales Theatre mark the beginning of a series of parallel and joint adventures. Eliza McGinty goes into labor while starring in Hamlet, and shortly after, Miles is born. Eliza Dowling gives birth to Isabel upon returning home from viewing the same stage production. Years later, Miles and Isabel meet Tobias Smith, the famous balloonist, but when Tobias becomes a dissolute drunk, Miles is temporarily disillusioned. Forever the realist, he also dismisses the powers of Balthasar, the magician, who uses bogus methods of levitation. Miles' fascination with flying persists, however, and finds its counterpart in Isabel whose own obsession is reflected in the statuette of a balloonist she has kept on her desk at home. Later, the two apply the principles learned from various experiments to the construction of a complicated box kite that will actually fly and even carry them short distances.

This story about illusion and reality has its inception in the theatre, always a place of illusion. Miles reflects on the Prince of Denmark's rumination, "to sleep, perchance to dream," as he struggles to keep his vision alive in the midst of the detractors and so-called realists. Setting the dreamers C"a bloke can't always help what gets under his skin and into his brain") against the non-dreamers ("It's fences that's wanted, not bloody flying machines"), the author shows that it is the former who actually contribute to the progress of mankind. Miles' and Isabel's unstinting efforts to build a flying machine underscore the importance of daring and risking. Phyllis LaMontagne, Spencer, MA