After reading Lola in the Mirror, the newest and third novel by Australia’s most marketable literary sensation, one thing is clear: Trent Dalton is not a subtle writer. It’s not that he’s incapable of plucking heartstrings (have a gander at any Goodreads reviews), it’s that his tool of choice – piping-hot sentimentality – boils to oblivion any remnants of nuance. It’s not that he can’t spin a yarn either (he’s a journalist, after all), it’s that he flattens complexity into a slurry of platitudes – “The light of our lives is formed by the darkness we place around it”, “The world turns for us all” – ad nauseam. Most concerningly though, his ideas aren’t just merely lazy; when placed under scrutiny, some are misleading, if not dangerous.
If you’ve been under an Australia-sized rock and haven’t heard of Dalton, his works span his award-demolishing debut Boy Swallows Universe (adapted for the stage and an upcoming Netflix series), its follow-up All Our Shimmering Skies, and a nonfiction collection titled Love Stories. A News Corp journalist for the Courier-Mail before becoming a staff writer for the Weekend Australian in 2021, Dalton was stirred to fiction by his tumultuous childhood and stalwart mother. Boy Swallows Universe was clunky, dripping in schmaltz and – as former Sydney Review of Books editor Catriona Menzies-Pike deftly noted – engrained with a conservative worldview of a distinctly Scott Morrison flavour. It was at least alive with some memorable characters.
