STEVE MINON First Name, Second Name. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith

Winner of a Queensland Literary Award, Steve MinOn’s debut novel charts the lives – and afterlives – of a family of Chinese Australians.

Queensland author Steve MinOn’s debut novel, First Name, Second Name, explores the complexities of family history and personal identity through the Chinese myth of the Jiangshi: a corpse risen to perform a final task. In this case, the Jiangshi is Stephen Bolin, whose posthumous journey from Brisbane to Innisfail in Far North Queensland revives his experiences as a gay, mixed-race man in Brisbane and London. The novel alternates between Stephen-as-corpse, as a living man, and the story of his Australian ancestry, begun by Bridget Wilkie and Pan Bo Lin, nineteenth-century Irish and Chinese immigrants. To avoid unwanted attention, they choose the surname ‘Bolin’, which incidentally unravels the mystery of author MinOn’s idiosyncratic capitalisation.

Upon his death just prior to the beginning of the novel, Stephen leaves an enigmatic and poetic note requesting that his family strap his body to sticks of bamboo and make the pilgrimage to Innisfail themselves, bearing his corpse. The family briefly discusses his request before understandably deciding against the idea. When Stephen realises his entreaty has fallen on deaf ears, he takes up the task himself, slipping out of the morgue in clothes belonging to another recently deceased man who wasn’t quite as determined to escape death as Stephen was.

As Stephen’s corpse makes his way north, one hundred years earlier, Pan Bo Lin and Bridget Wilkie make their way south. Driven by Bo Lin’s web of debts and resentment of the local Sze Yap Chinese – an interesting slice of Australian history that could support a novel in itself – they are also fleeing financial uncertainty and the fearful racism of colonial Queensland. They are conspicuous outsiders in Australia, a trait they share with their vivid and publicly decomposing descendent.

As Stephen writes in his death note, ‘Try not to be too obvious. Stick to the backroads. Walk at night and avoid the heat of the day.’ In different ways, each of the novel’s protagonists must adhere to this proscription.

The first half of the novel is split between Stephen’s posthumous journey and his family’s history up until his birth, when his subsequent personal story occupies the rest of the novel. One strength of the novel is the way Stephen’s experiences echo those of his ancestors – and vice versa. Both parties are outsiders on account of race, both seeking a better life elsewhere (or perhaps a better death, in Stephen’s case). As Bo Lin and Bridget encounter bald prejudice and undisguised scorn, young Stephen grapples with his father’s homophobia and the increasingly overt racism reflected by Pauline Hanson’s rise in the 1990s. The disruptions following her maiden speech in 1996 are depicted in the novel, giving a sense that the prejudice Stephen experiences personally at home is mirrored in broader society.

Despite the complex, interwoven identities and darker themes of prejudice (not to mention a protagonist vividly rendered as a decomposing corpse), these aspects are balanced by a wry, occasionally funny voice that works well to brighten the darkness. As graphic as the descriptions of Stephen are, they are also quite entertaining; MinOn has obviously spent a good deal of time imagining the troubles that would face such a creature:

He landed awkwardly on his back and felt a rib dislocate at the point of impact, one of the floating ribs. As he walked, he could feel it swimming inside him, circling his organs.

In the acknowledgements, MinOn describes the book as ‘a fictional minestrone of lives. But also, books’, citing family journals and a published family history about the Bolins. This imbues MinOn’s novel with a sense of authenticity, and broader historical stories play off against personal histories in interesting ways. There is the sense that MinOn wished to depict the varied facets of Stephen’s identity within the structure of the book itself, and he achieves this, although covering such varied grounds means we move quickly, and there are times when it would be nice to linger. Neither Stephen nor his ancestors were able to linger, though, so perhaps it would be unfair to afford the reader that privilege.   

Steve MinOn First Name, Second Name UQP 2025 PB 252pp $32.99

Ben Ford Smith is an Adelaide-based writer and the co-author of Drugs, Guns & Lies (2020, Allen & Unwin). He holds a PhD in creative writing from Flinders University, South Australia.

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Tags: Australian fiction, Chinese Australians, debut novel, family histories, Jiangshi, Queensland Literary Awards, Steve | MinOn