Boy Swallows Universe

Eli, 12 Jahre alt, lebt mit seinem ein Jahr älteren Bruder Gus bei der Mutter und deren Freund, den er wie einen Vater liebt. Die Beiden dealen mit Heroin, währenddessen Slim auf die Jungs aufpasst: ein ehemaliger Häftling, der wegen Mordes nach 30 Jahren vor kurzem aus dem Knast entlassen wurde. Doch trotz dieses nicht gerade kindgerechten Umfeldes ist Elis Leben geprägt von Liebe, Freundschaft und Zuwendung, selbst in den schwierigsten Momenten.

Obwohl die schrecklichsten Dinge geschehen, die selbst in Eli einen Todeswunsch auslösen, findet er immer wieder zurück zu seinem Vertrauen und dem Glauben an das Gute im Leben und im Menschen. Dabei helfen ihm nicht nur seine Familie und Freunde, sondern auch seine Phantasie, die ihn show more selbst in den übelsten Momenten nicht verlässt.

Eli ist der Ich-Erzähler dieser rund 550 Seiten und als Lesende begleiten wir ihn bis zu seinem 18. Lebensjahr. Er ist der geborene Geschichtenerzähler und hat einen Blick für die kleinsten Details:

Wahres Wissen besteht aus Einzelheiten, sagt Slim. Und Wissen ist Macht.
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Einigen mag dies zu ausufernd sein, doch Eli erzählt witzig und durchaus selbstironisch, wobei es für einen 12-, 13jährigen manchmal aber etwas sehr erwachsen klingt. Bedenkt man jedoch, unter welchen Umständen er lebt, mag es nicht weiter verwundern

Dad lächelt und nickt. Nächtliche Panikattacken. Suizidal-depressive Phasen. Dreitägiges Komasaufen. Von Fäusten aufgerissene Augenbrauen. Gallige Kotze. Dünnschiss. Braune Pisse. Das ist unsere Wirklichkeit.
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Einerseits ist es ein hartes, brutales Buch, in dem auch Kinder nicht von Gewalt verschont werden (wie auch, wenn sie in einem solchen Milieu aufwachsen); andererseits spürt man auf beinahe jeder Seite, mit wieviel Wärme und Zuneigung sich die Menschen um Eli und seinen Bruder kümmern (wollen), um ihnen ein besseres Leben und die Verwirklichung ihrer Träume zu ermöglichen.

Für den Autor Trent Dalton ist Eli eine Art alter Ego, denn auch er ist unter solchen Umständen aufgewachsen und sein bester Freund war zeitweise tatsächlich Slim, der Ausbrecherkönig. Durch Daltons beeindruckenden Schreibstil war ich fast das ganze Buch hindurch fest überzeugt, dass ihm all die schlimmen Dinge ebenso zugestoßen sind und machte mich auf die Suche, u.a. nach Zeigefingern show less

If I had to choose only one word to describe this book, I think I would pick “stunning,” which in fact I have seen other reviewers of this book use. However, I believe the protagonist, Eli, who usually tries to pick three words to describe things, would also grant me three, so perhaps I would say “Author Encapsulates Universe.”

The novel - which, I discovered after reading it, turns out to be semi-autobiographical, begins in the 1980’s in Brisbane, Australia. In an interview, author Dalton and his mom agreed that the book was a “50-50 mix of fact and fantasy.”

Eli Bell - the narrator - is aged 12 when we first meet him. Along with his older brother August (a mash-up of Dalton’s three brothers) he lives with his mother and show more stepfather, both of whom are much beloved by the boys, in Darra, a run-down impoverished Brisbane suburb comprised of Polish and Vietnamese refugees. As Eli describes it, in one of the many sublime and illuminating flights of prose in this book:

“Darra is a dream, a stench, a spilt garbage bin, a cracked mirror, a paradise, a bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup filled with prawns, domes of plastic crab meat, pig ears and pig knuckles and pig belly. 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.”

The story opens with a memory taken from the author’s own life depicting a scene between Eli and a family friend, Arthur ‘Slim’ Halliday, a man once dubbed the “Houdini of Boggo Road Gaol” for his extraordinary ability to escape from the notorious and “inescapable” Brisbane prison. Slim met Eli’s stepdad Lyle while on work release, and after prison, ended up doing odd jobs for the family and watching over the boys when their parents were away. (In the book, at any rate, the parents - former addicts who have stopped using drug themselves, now are drug dealers for the lucrative neighborhood business of running Golden Triangle heroin.)

Eli adored Slim, and Slim reciprocated, teaching Eli about life as he learned it in prison: the importance of noticing details; all that you can learn from your other senses besides your ears; and the observation that all people have both good and bad inside. Slim told Eli:

“The tricky part is learnin’ how to be good all the time and bad none of the time. Some of us get that right. Most of us don’t.”

Eli is obsessed with this question. He thinks often of the seminal moment in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker enters Yoda’s cave at Dagobah, and finds out about the potential for darkness within him. Which will Eli turn out to be: a good man, or a bad man? And which one can describe the men in his life? (He gets into a bit of trouble by asking them all.)

In light of Eli’s fixation on this point, Slim tells him further:

“. . . about the good and the bad… I should have told you . . . it’s nothing but a choice. There’s no past in it, there’s no mums and dads and no where you came froms. It’s just a choice. Good. Bad. That’s all there is.”

Eli in fact sees plenty of both good and bad in action, because of the presence of drugs and violent drug dealers in his life. He also observes, however, how choices made at an earlier point can curtail change further up the road. He is focused on how to avoid creating dead ends like that. He knows that he must take steps to ensure he is heading on the right path for his future before getting swallowed up by the universe, as he thinks happened to his parents.

Slim suggests to him: “Stop tellin everybody else’s story and start tellin’ your own for once. Do your time, before it does you.”

By the point when Eli is 18, which is when the story concludes, he has learned - just as Slim told him, that fate can be changed, and other people's stories don't have to be his. Further, he discovers that love and belief in goodness can sustain you through the worst of times, helping you to make the right choices, instead of just the easy ones.

Evaluation: This is a sprawling panorama of life amidst a world, as Dalton says in an interview, “swirling with a hundred social issues – alcoholism, unemployment, domestic violence, generational social curses....” It is fresh, insightful, full of razor-sharp observations and astoundingly infused with optimism. Eli is an earnest and endearing boy who desperately aspires to goodness, in spite of all the cruelty around him, and the misfortunes to which he and his family were subjected.

Some of the scenes depicted are not for the faint-hearted, but I was awe-struck. show less

I got lucky on this one. I got it for free in an Independent Bookstore Day promotion, but having read a couple of interesting reviews of it, I gave it a shot. It took me a while to get grabbed by it (maybe as much as 200 pages), but then that familiar feeling of a being caught in a good story took over.

The central character is Eli Bell, a young teenager growing up in Darra, a small Australian town. His mom and dad have split up, and he lives with his mom, her boyfriend Lyle, his older brother August, and their “babysitter” and Eli’s mentor, Slim. Sounds like a relatively normal family setting, but . . . Eli’s mom and boyfriend are heroin addicts and dealers. August is an enigmatic, wise soul who has chosen not to speak (he does show more write enigmatically prophetic messages with his finger tracing letters in the air). And Slim is an ex-con, a convicted killer and renowned prison escape artist.

And then there’s Caitlyn. I won’t say anything about Caitlyn, because saying almost anything about Caitlyn would be a spoiler.

In some ways, the story manages to come out of all that as a recognizable coming-of-age story. And I even thought of Huck Finn at times as I read it (although it’s like Huck Finn in Australia in the age of drugs and corruption in high places). Eli is learning his life lessons. He’s living with a fundamental question about good and bad. As Slim tells him, “It’s just a choice. Good. Bad. That’s all there is.” And Eli wonders how you make that choice, why bad people “decided to be bad instead of good.” He has enough bad people around him for full time study.

Obviously Eli faces some special challenges. Through no choices of his own, he is hip deep in a swamp of organized crime, drugs, and murder. Somehow, arching over it all is his ambition to become a crime reporter and to choose Good.

It comes together. Eli is tested, and everything is at stake — the chance to choose Good, the chance to become a crime reporter, the chance to straighten out the lives of the people around him, and there’s Caitlyn in there again.

There are magical elements as well. August is truly prophetic . . . somehow. And there is a mysterious red phone in a hidden room in the house Eli is growing up in that rings and intervenes at strategic moments.

Your reading of the story, if you are at all like me, will change dramatically once you realize (in Trent Dalton’s comments about the book in a kind of afterword) that the story has its roots in fact. Dalton says, “This book draws heavily from the most profound period of my childhood, when I was raised by a pair of dangerously successful heroin dealers.” So this is not just a wild fiction. Some of it is true. Even Slim is based on the real life Slim Halliday, “The Houdini of Boggo Road” and family friend of Dalton when he was growing up.

The story is so personal that I’m a little afraid that it may be THE book that Dalton has in him. He’s a very good writer, though, and I hope there’s more. show less

Oh my. I loved this book. It's a thriller, a romance, a family drama, a crime story, a fantasy, a gritty coming of age story. It's about human complexity and contradiction. Revenge and redemption. Time and chance.

I admit that I connected with it on an intimate level having grown up a bit too soon in my own life. I know what it's like to be 12 and faced with adult responsibilities and choices. I understand the dichotomy of being young, confused, and fearful yet needing to be strong, informed, and capable for survival.

Despite an inauspicious start in life, Eli Bell (and I) actually had the most important ingredient for a future... Unconditional love and support.

More than anything, Boy Swallows Universe is a love story. It's a story show more about the limitless possibilities of love and the unconditional nature of real love which we can find in the coldest, darkest, and strangest places. show less

This is told in that kind of narrative style where the earnest optimism of the protagonist is easy to be swept up in, much like how I felt about The Heart's Invisible Furies.

It's difficult to describe how this never distilled someone's humanity down to their worst mistakes or actions-big or little-and it never got bogged down in cynical meditations despite Eli Bell's often heartbreaking realizations about the world around him and its fragility and how wrong he can be about how he perceives it.

The writing is full of imagery and gorgeous. It walks a line carefully between magic and reality. It never gets indulgent, and it never bores.

Quite simply: brilliant. I loved it. Thanks to Jultri for the recommendation.

‘Your end is a dead blue wren. Boy swallows universe. Caitlyn spies. No doubt about it. These are the answers. The answers to the questions.’

I almost don’t know what to say to review this. This is an extraordinary achievement; deeply moving, funny, magical, harrowing, uplifting – all at the same time. This debut novel by Aussie Trent Dalton is clearly a very personal thing, and having read several interviews before I launched into the book, I thought I knew what I was going to get. It was more, much more than I imagined. Fictionalised autobiographical writing is a hard genre to write: where is the line between fact and imagination is always at the forefront? But here I just lost myself in the story, with Dalton’s writing style show more simply mesmerising.

This is the story of Eli Bell, his (by choice) mute older brother Gus, and their wholly dysfunctional family. Their father may or may not have tried to drown them in his car when they were younger; their mother, throwing him out of the house, now lives with her lover Lyle, who just happens to be a drug dealer; Eli’s babysitter, and best friend, is Slim, who just happens to be Australia’s most notorious ex-con. The family live in Darra, a run-down suburb of Brisbane, where life is pretty hard. As the novel progresses over time, Eli grows from being the 12-year old kid to being a young adult, coming to terms with his life, and his family. Dalton has dedicated the book to his own mother who has turned her life around from poor life choices and a prison sentence. Certainly, there is a celebration of family, of love and relationships, of sticking together, which makes the book ultimately a positive and uplifting experience.

But, be warned, it is a rough journey. Dalton makes no attempts to hide the grim underbelly of this life: drugs, violence, abuse, murder…these are all at the heart of the story. Yet, there is also a magical feeling to it all: Gus seems to be able to see into the future, signing with his finger rather than talking (you will spend most of the book wondering what the hell ‘your end is a dead blue wren’ means!); Eli talks to someone on a red telephone that he finds in an escape room in the family home (but just who is on the other end?). The dialogue is snappy, often funny. There are Star Wars references. And quests. But it is the writing that sweeps you along; Dalton can write long, looping sentences that dazzle, but equally he will write short, snappy ones that come at you like gunfire. It is a tour de force, a glorious and astonishing piece of writing.

I started reading this and thought ‘I’m going to like this book’; by midway I was in love with it. By the end, well, I just didn’t want it to end. You simply must read this book. I have no other words. This is now, and probably will remain, the best book I have read this year. 5 stars, it simply has to be. show less

Boy Loves Book, Boy Swallows Universe - Full Review Here: https://hexdro.net/2020/04/05/boy-loves-book-boy-swallows-universe-by-trent-dalt...

This book consumed me in the best way writing can. I found myself reading Boy Swallows Universe every chance I got. Trent Dalton’s style is just so gorgeous and captivating. Whether it be during train rides, my lunch break, or even in the middle of university lectures, you could find me with my nose in the book – and that’s the highest praise I can give. So if you’re wondering if it’s worth the read… The answer is pretty clear; you should be wondering why you haven’t picked up your own copy yet.

The book focuses on Eli Bell, a boy growing up in a dysfunctional family. He has an absent show more father, a mute brother, a junkie mum and a heroin dealer for a stepdad. The story has a bit of everything. It’s a story about brotherhood, unlikely friendships, true love and heartbreak, with a hint of magic throughout.

You will follow Eli on the adventure of a lifetime when he has to come face to face with the drug dealers that tore his world apart, creating family with a father he doesn’t remember, and falling in love with the girl of his dreams. When recommending it to me, my friend described the book as beautiful, and it is. Boy Swallows Universe is beautiful the way a night sky is beautiful. It’s the literature equivalent of staring up at the stars on a clear night. It’s breath-taking, and the experience is surreal, but it’s also humbling show less