‘Oliver Mol announces himself as a writer to watch with his memoir of growing up in pre-9/11 America (and finding his feet as a writer in Melbourne) in Lion Attack!’
Martin Shaw, Readings
‘Raw, honest, irascible, poignant … a crackling ball of energy and inventiveness. Lion Attack! is less a memoir than it is an entirely new way of telling a life. A deeply personal work that somehow seems to know you better than you know yourself.’
Luke Ryan, author of ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo’
‘Funny, achingly sharp, and stylistically sure … Written in skilfully pared-back prose, Lion Attack! is a bold status update on Australian grunge lit, logging in where Eric Dando’s Snail and Andrew McGahan’s 1988 left off.’
Maxine Beneba Clarke, author of 'Foreign Soil'
‘Oliver Mol’s voice gets inside your head. His book pulses and crackles with energy, at once sexy and suffused with yearning. He shimmies between memory and imagination, from childhood visions of an eternally weird America to days and nights spent young, scattered, and hopeful in Melbourne. At its heart this book is about how we stumble towards a way to live and love.’
David Carlin, author of Our Father Who Wasn’t There and The Abyssinian Contortionist
‘Young, brash, and confident, Oliver Mol’s debut exudes swagger and style.’
Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law
‘Oliver Mol is stripping away conceit in favor of a new, extremely fresh form of narrative. Lion Attack! is as honest as honesty can get: every thought and feeling gutted and splayed for the reader to react and relate to. It's writing like this that breaks boundaries, blurring fact and fiction … [offering] a candid injection of the present moment we often are too busy analysing to enjoy. Mol lets it all wash over him, masterfully cataloguing what sometimes seems so impossible to perceive. Writing like this is alive and breathing. The question then might be: Are you alive?’
Michael J. Seidlinger, author of 'The Strangest'
‘Mol has produced a fascinating study of masculinity and sex … [Mol’s] story is a picture of modern connection — including Facebook messages and phone calls — but despite this, a melancholy loneliness haunts the text. Lion Attack! is a moving reading experience.’
Lou Heinrich, The Big Issue
‘With Lion Attack! Mol offers a funny, affecting and accessible reflection on his youth and the nature of memory. [Mol’s] voice is earnest, exuberant, and alive with a beat that will get stuck in your head … Lion Attack! is Mol speaking frankly about who he is … he's kind, he tries hard and he's written a book unlike anything you've ever read before.’
Stella Charls, Readings Monthly
‘If every book was filled with as much life and energy and heart as Lion Attack!, then a hell of a lot more people would be reading books. Maybe it's better, though, because if this were the case, then Mol’s writing wouldn't be so damn special. This is a magical dream of a book.’
Juliet Escoria, author of Black Cloud
‘Mol’s writing style is aptly economical, with his hilarious, astute observations uniquely structured as an unfiltered live stream of mundanity, self-doubt and romance. Amidst all this introspective gazing, Mol also subtly explores wider social issues, including feminism, homophobia and masculinity. In his own completely unique way.’
Rolling Stone
‘Mol writes stylised prose that makes the pages flick by … It's a simple but effective double narrative … The alternating chapters coil around each other to produce a tension between “what was”, “what is”, and “what might be”, both for the author and for the reader. I was refreshed … to hear voices and read characters that made me nod, laugh and cringe with recognition. In the late-empire, pre-9/11 United States, there is a deep current of American imperialism pushing and pulling the childhood exchanges that can produce a fever of alienation even in someone as privileged as the young white boy in the text. Lion Attack! grabs and gropes and reaches, eager and striving to burst into a new kind of maturity.’
The Thousands
‘Oliver Mol travels a fine, deft line between Too Much Information and a disarming, ruthless honesty. Lion Attack! nails some of the longing, hilarity, tremulous hope, and searing embarrassment of passing from boyhood to manhood … This book will drag you every which way.’
Margo Lanagan, author of Sea Hearts and Tender Morsels
‘Oliver Mol is one of the most exciting writers I know. Lion Attack! is one of the most exciting books I've read. It's funny and it has short chapters and it has personality and there's a story about a friend who jerked off with a pizza. I don't think there's anything more to say. Wait! Maybe there is something more. I’ve never met Oliver in person but I know him through this book. You’re getting ready to meet Oliver Mol too. You don't even know it yet, but you're really lucky. We used to call events like these miracles. Welcome to a miracle.’
Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia
‘A sincere, funny, refreshingly unpretentious musing on life.’
Good Reading
‘Lion Attack is a fascinating read … The energy and spirit is unstoppable, and is of a level of sophistication arguably never seen before. It is almost safe to say that Oliver Mol has created a totally new genre of memoir, that could transform the way we look at the world. Who knows where this ingenious young writer will go to from here, and only time will tell what kinds of magic his style of capable of producing. For now, at least, Mol could not have made a better debut to his career than Lion Attack!’
SYN FM
'I know the electric feeling that is too often missing from the world when it is written on the page. The pure light comes in from here and there ... It is there in the feverish marginalia and the wet monomania of Kate Middleton’s Ephemeral Waters, in the plangent logorrhoea of PiO’s Fitzroy ... in the distended alt-text ouroboria of Oliver Mol’s Lion Attack, and in every line of the tectonic linguistic ecologies that make up Alexis Wright’s mesmerizing novels.'
Luke Carman, Lithub
‘Refreshingly honest … Mol has written a no-holds-barred commentary on life. FOUR STARS’
Books+Publishing
‘This is what literature feels like when it is alive … Lion Attack! documents what it means to be alive right now, showing how reality and fantasy co-exist.’
Beach Sloth
‘The vignettes crackle with energy and convey the otherworldliness of an American seen through the eyes of an Australian child … Mol is intent on exploring how the internet is changing the way we communicate.’
Australian Book Review
‘In a literary landscape dominated by historical fiction written by older writers, Scribe should be applauded for taking a risk on a book that is written by someone younger, predominantly for a younger readership. And Lion Attack! certainly does captures the essence of youth …’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘Oliver Mol has written a book that’ll resonate with a lot of young Australians, while still being deeply personal.’
FourThousand
‘Bitingly funny’
Sydney Writers’ Festival
'The book is a refreshing rethink of the blurred line that exists between fiction and non-fiction, serving equally as a snapshot of his generation and own life experiences. A structure utilised, in part, to assist in the novel's subtle exploration of a variety of issues, including homophobia, feminism and masculinity, alongside the story's central narrative.'
Rolling Stone
‘I absolutely treasured Lion Attack! A must read for Gen Y. Poignant, raw and powerful. Oliver Mol is the real deal.’
Matthew Naqvi, filmmaker and television host
’Oliver Mol’s writing is confessional, honest, endearing, and declarative all at once.’
Jack Stanton, Grapeshot
‘Terrific book’
Sarah Kanowski, Radio National
‘While reading Lion Attack! I kept thinking YES! It made me feel pumped. It made me feel good and bad (in a good way) about being human. It is honest, thoughtful, and funny. I implore you to read this book!’
Stacey Teague, author of takahe
‘Mol makes you think … Lion Attack! will weigh you down just enough to see what matters, and make you smile a lot while reading it. This is a book for those who are maybe feeling a little lost, who want to see their lives from a new perspective, who want to find some hope that things can turn around. It's also for people who are feeling a bit lucky. It’s just for everyone, really.’
New South Wales Writers Centre
‘Lion Attack! finds Mol riffing on everything from sex and love, to work, writing, family and much more. He has delivered to us a truly unique piece of modern, contemporary writing. His humour and wit are infectious.’
BookBonding (staff pick)
'Mol’s reflections on childhood insecurities, and the anxieties that accompany him growing up in different environments, are raw, funny, relatable and innately truthful ... I found myself unable to stop reading.'
The Eastsider
