Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, is twelve years old, and motherless, surviving a brutal life with her father Horace and uncle Aubrey, when the Japanese bombs rain down on Darwin in 1942.

She embarks on a journey to find Longcoat Bob, who she believes has put a curse on her family. Her travel companions are Greta Maze, a blonde bombshell actress and Yukio Miki, a Japanese fighter pilot, Molly’s ‘sky gift’ as he fell from the sky.

[a:Trent Dalton|17503523|Trent Dalton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1541749971p2/17503523.jpg] has written another magical, lyrical novel that requires the reader to surrender to his poetic and romantic writing style. At times overblown, but always beguiling, I lost myself in this wondrous novel and will never forget the indomitable Molly Hook.

Trent Dalton has spun a tale of heartbreak and tenderness that is luminous and beautiful, and totally unforgettable. I will always remember Eli Bell, a ‘boy with an old soul and an adult mind’, who tells us his story with honesty and compassion.

It’s 1985, Eli is twelve years old and is living in Darra - ‘Darra is a dream, a stench, a spilt garbage bin, a cracked mirror, a paradise, a bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup filled with prawns…Darra is a girl washed down a drainpipe, a boy with snot slipping from his nose so ripe it glows on Easter night, a teenage girl stretched across a train track waiting for the express to Central and beyond, a South African man smoking Sudanese weed, a Filipino man injecting Afghani dope next door to a girl from Cambodia sipping milk from Queensland’s Darling Downs. Darra is my quiet sigh, my reflection on war, my dumb pre-teen longing, my home.’ Eli lives with his older brother Gus, who stopped speaking when he was six, his mother Fran, who is a heroin addict and his step-father Lyle, who is a drug dealer….and his baby-sitter is a convicted murderer.

When his mother is sent to gaol, and his stepfather ‘disappears’, Eli and Gus are sent to live with a father they have never met. Robert is not in a good place either, drinking himself to oblivion most nights. He is living in absolute squalor and filth. Dalton’s description of Robert’s bathroom is so visceral, I don’t recommend reading this while having your lunch! However, you can feel Robert’s pain, and his struggle to be the father he wants to be - he wants to be a good man.

If you are looking for a theme in this extraordinary novel, this is it: what makes a good man? Who is a good man and who is a bad man, and what is the difference? This is Eli’s quest throughout the book - to find the answer to this question. As the story unfolds, you realise that Eli is a good man in the making, with a huge capacity to forgive the unforgivable. There is so much love in this book. Not the mushy, romantic, rom-com style of love, but real love: ‘…she knew there was hardship in this true love and endurance and reward and failure and renewal and, finally, death, but never regret.’.

My copy of Boy Swallows Universe is a rainbow of post-it notes, marking passages that I love and want to remember. I cannot recommend this book highly enough (although, be warned, there is a lot of colourful language, as we are keeping company with colourful characters).