Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
Fourth Estate
Pp. 471
Set in Brisbane
in 1985, this novel focuses on a boy, Eli Bell, and his terrible life. His
father is absent; his drug-addicted mother is in gaol; his brother, August,
doesn’t speak but writes words in the air with his finger, predicting things he
couldn’t possibly know and that don’t make any sense; his stepfather is a
dealer; and he’s surrounded by violent criminals. It is reminiscent of Bridge of Clay in style, where a
young boy narrates but with a much older voice than the teenage kid he is meant
to be.
Eli seems
anxious to show off his disadvantage; he is brought up by drug-dealing thugs
and potential killers, and told many prison stories. At one point his mother’s
boyfriend drags her by the hair down to the dog kennel and forces her to eat
their food from the dog bowl; at another he has his index finger chopped off
with a cleaver. Referring constantly to the seedy underside of life and proudly
intent on exposing the dark side of the country,, his unrelentingly grim
descriptions sound like a kid trying to be hard-boiled, thinking he’s Holden
Caulfield and hiding behind a tough exterior.
The style
constantly gets in the way of the story, to the point that it is tedious to
follow. Dalton writes in the present tense, in frequently overblown prose, with
short snatches of description that aren’t actually sentences. “This room of
true love. This room of blood. Sky-blue fibro walls.” The many full stops do
not create emphasis, but merely sound like empty aphorisms; one could try to
work out whether they mean anything, but mainly they just sound like an advert
for carpet. Many of the references are to male narratives he probably wouldn’t
have read: Ken Kesey; Henry Miller; Papillon
by Henri Charriere; Steinbeck’s The
Grapes of Wrath; Patrick White; Hermann Hesse; John Le Carré; Joseph Conrad;
Hemingway and Herman Melville.
There are also
allusions to The Wizard of Oz and The Jungle Book, and a scene in which
Eli escapes from hospital by getting another child patient to create a
diversion, which is his take on the escape from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Eli’s mute brother, August, writes
words in the air: Your end is a small blue wren; Caitlin Spies. These all,
obviously, turn out to be prophetic. Eli ruminates, “Maybe we’d all be much
more effective communicators if we all shut up more.” Ooh, deep!
Eli writes to
Slim’s friends in prison, and Slim (his babysitter and a previous criminal who
served time) advises him to put details into the letters: “The boys appreciate
all that detailed daily life shit they don’t get any more.” Eli hones his
observation skills because this builds up knowledge, which leads to power. It
is, also, however, monotonous and smacks of product placement. The number of
times he mentions the brand of his shoes and tracksuits; he could be sponsored
by Dunlop and Adidas.
He thinks of his
mother as a saint or an angel, but she’s a dealer and a junkie who winds up in
gaol. There is a sentimental view of mothers which is familiar from stock
criminal narratives. His father (Robert), Slim (Arthur) and Lyle are men who
teach Eli wisdom whereas women don’t teach him anything; they are mothers, nurses,
and love interests. He is well aware of the toxic masculinity that surrounds him
and believes that “every problem in the world, every crime ever committed, can
be traced back to someone’s dad... Mums maybe too, I guess, but there ain’t no
shit mum in this world that wasn’t first the daughter of a shit dad.”
All of the
chapters are introduced with three-word headings such as Boy Writes Words, Boy
Receives Letter, Boy Meets Girl, Boy Seeks Help, Boy Parts Sea, Boy Steals
Ocean, Boy Conquers Moon. The reason for this becomes apparent later when a
newspaper editor asks Eli to describe his story in three words: Boy Swallows
Universe.
The novel
certainly contains a lot of detail, is grimly pessimistic and, although Dalton
claims it is a love story, it is more of a tirade. He may claim that love and
family is the answer rather than drug addiction, but he has a good wallow in poverty
porn before he reaches that conclusion.
