Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

For some of us the violence and the language were all too much and Boy Swallows Universe was discarded early in the piece. But most members accepted these elements were necessary given the storyline, and enjoyed finding out how plucky, resilient Eli survives his childhood on the wrong side of the tracks in 1980s Brisbane.

The major role figures in Eli’s life - mute older brother, absent alcoholic father, drug dealer stepfather, psychopathic school friend and his drug importing parents, mother in jail, an ex-con babysitter, and a Boggo Road Gaol pen pal who happens to be the former sergeant-of-arms of the Rebel Motorcycle Gang - all influence Eli in working out his own destiny. There is plenty of trauma along the way.

If that all seems rather grim the book is peppered with plenty of wit and laconic Australian one-liners to lift the mood and has a hopeful heart at its core.

There is a wealth of details about Brisbane in the 1980s which adds to the book’s gritty realism. The settings in a wide range of Brisbane suburbs are always the mentioned-in-passing background to the action but the author provides concrete details of a hard scrabble life spent in housing commission homes where the fridge contains a lonely tub of ETA, Devon sausage and mouldy bread, and where the pastel fibro houses have smashed walls and overgrown gardens filled with the detritus of broken appliances. Details of hard conditions in Boggo Road Gaol also figure largely in the plot as a backdrop to the history of real life ex-con, Arthur Earnest (Slim) Halliday, Eli’s babysitter (and the author’s childhood friend).

The book has plenty of nostalgic references to old Queenslander houses in Nundah, the old humpy bridge to Redcliffe, the aspirational leafy Gap with its cul-de-sacs, swimming at the Enoggera Reservoir, and the Magic Mile of Motors in Moorooka (where dealerships offer cars ranging from “All our cars have airbags” to “All our cars have windscreens”).

There are also frequent references to the technology, music, food and popular culture of the 80s, particularly as interested young boys: everything from the Sony Betamax video cassette recorder, the early Cassio calculator where you could “calculate” your name, Polaroids and dictaphones; to the heroes of Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Conan the Barbarian, Tron and Excalibur. A wide range of minor characters in cameo roles with just a few lines of dialogue add life to the book. There are even a few animals who briefly take centre stage.

Literary references also abound. Eli’s father, who despite alcoholism has read everything and aces Sale of the Century every night, calls a house plant Henry Bath after reading Henry Miller in the bathtub.

Babysitter Slim has read Moby Dick and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Magical realism also plays a part in this book - can Eli’s mute brother, August, foretell the future? What is the meaning of his strange writings in the air and the Moon Pool? In the boys’ shared trauma (where the author has no doubt been influenced by the notorious case of Robert Farquharson) what is the role of the red phone which rings whenever Eli is close by?

A good dose of philosophical questioning sprinkles the pages, much of it from Slim: “Time will do you in, so do your time before it does you.” “True character must surely be best displayed in an underworld where the opposite is the norm, when evil is living and goodness is an indulgence.” Eli also works out that “Maybe we’d all be more effective communicators if we all shut up more.”

Eli endlessly questions what makes a good man and wants to be tested on a quest to see if he can be good. He recognises the hypocrisy of a life where his parent and guardian deal drugs but where he is still corrected for swearing or for not doing his homework or chores. But as “a man with a plan”, he holds to his desire to become a journalist and work on the crime desk of The Courier-Mail, like the young woman he is falling in love with. And in this and other details the book reveals its autobiographical core.

Sometimes overblown, the writing still held our attention through the careful interlinking of each episode to the final unravelling of the plot. The author is clearly hoping for success on the big screen with a number of Boy’s Own Adventures seasoning the action and an ending just made for Hollywood.

Who is Trent Dalton?

Trent Dalton is a Brisbane-based Australian journalist who currently works for The Weekend Australian and formerly for The Courier-Mail.

He published his first work of fiction, the semi-autobiographical novel, Boy Swallows Universe, in 2018. Last year the novel won a wheelbarrow-load of acclamations and awards.

It won the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year, the Literary Fiction Book of the Year, The Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, the Audio Book of the Year, the Indie Book Award for Debut fiction, and the UTS Glenda Adams Award (as part of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards) for New Writing. It was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize, The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award, the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance, and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction. It was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Award.

The adaptation rights were won last year by Anonymous Content, Chapter One and Hopscotch Features, to be directed by Australian actor and director, Joel Edgerton.

His latest novel, All our Shimmering Skies, a story set during the bombing of Darwin in the Second World War, is due to be published in October this year.

He has also written a non-fiction work, By Sea & Stars: The Story of the First Fleet, published in 2018.