Trent Dalton tackles First Fleet in second book By Sea and Stars
After his successful debut climbed the bestseller list, Trent Dalton has dropped his follow up By Sea and Stars, just five months later.
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There’s an edge to Trent Dalton. Brisbane’s own poet laureate has a new book out, and it’s a far cry from his first book. Well, sort of.
Boy Swallows Universe — a loosely autobiographical tale of growing up and surviving at the tough end of town — hit shelves in June and went straight to the bestseller list.
Just five months later we have By Sea and Stars, a rock star account of the First Fleet.
Despite the potentially confronting subject matter, for Dalton it’s been a welcome escape from immersion in his own story as portrayed in BSU.
And total immersion it is, as anyone who has read the stunning novel — our December Book of the Month — will attest.
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It’s a heady mix of light and shade. It smells like Christmas beetles and sweaty classrooms and melting car seat vinyl. It sounds like cicadas and the Mentals crackling on the radio. It tastes like a lukewarm Solo. It’s evocative, all about the details, Dalton says.
At the centre of it all is Eli Bell, a streetwise but soft-hearted 12-year-old (in essence, Dalton himself), and his non-verbal brother August; plus his mentor Slim Halliday, a convicted murderer who doles out life lessons and love while babysitting the boys. Their parents and friends are crims and druggies but their intentions are ultimately good. The book has been described as “honest, funny, moving” by David Wenham. You Am I rocker Tim Rogers said it left him “looking to the heavens”.
It’s all based on Dalton’s raw, heartbreaking, love-filled childhood. Halliday was real. They’re all real, to a degree.
But there’s another main character: Brisbane; and Australian suburbia in general. Authors have rarely set their work in Queensland’s capital, and if they have, like Nick Earls, Rebecca Sparrow or David Malouf, it’s mostly confined to the six kilometre radius of the inner-city suburbs. But to Dalton, Brisbane’s truest quirk and charm lies in the diaspora of loveable weirdness that is its outer limits; the bayside, southwest to Ipswich, up to Moreton Bay.
And the place that used to send shivers down any Queenslander’s spine is now enthusiastically discussed by Dalton’s readers.
“It’s so funny. Hearing people now going to Boggo Road (jail) going, ‘I read Boy Swallows Universe and I want to go see Slim Halliday’s cell’, it’s quite a funny thing to come out of that book,” Dalton laughs.
After keying the final full stop of his first novel, and while fielding a flood of film inquiries, Dalton sought the distraction of diaries from two centuries ago to write a snappy history of the First Fleet.
“I dived head first into the world of 1788, First Fleet. And it was the greatest thing I could have done because for so long I was stuck in that kind of world of Eli Bell, which for me was sometimes a harrowing place. This kid, Eli Bell, that I created. It’s no stretch at all to say he’s a lot of me. And that kid was this beautifully courageous kid who helped me go back to some things that were deep, deep, deep in the back of my mind. It wasn’t a nice place to be in.”
“But you know what’s a wondrous place? Of all places, the bloody First Fleet. Eleven ships setting sail into Botany Bay.”
The 130-page tale is a“ world of convicts and thieves and amazing, incredible people who decided to come up with the most extraordinary social experiment.”
Initially published as a serial in The Australian newspaper, where Dalton is an award-winning star feature writer, By Sea and Stars isn’t the dusty and well-trodden convict history from primary school.
It’s the stories of the people on those ships. And those on the shore. And despite the hours of research, elbows-deep in archives at the New South Wales State Library, there are gaps. The diaries and captain’s logs can’t tell the whole story. No one can.
“It’s a form of literary nonfiction in many ways,” Dalton says. The notes in those ancient books can’t fully detail the experience — but the characters stand out.
Moralising philanderer Lieutenant Ralph Clark. Dorothy Handland, an 82-year-old rag trader who made the perilous journey to the fatal shore — which proved fatal indeed. And frightened but tough convict kid, John Hudson, same age as Eli Bell, who stole Dalton’s heart in much the same way.
“It was an eight month voyage that changes history.” Dalton says. “What is that kid thinking? What is he smelling? What does the beard look like on the guy next to him? What’s under his fingernails?”
We may never know every fact — but with Dalton as a guide we can feel, imagine, understand. And maybe that’s enough.
Boy Swallows Universe and By Sea And Stars, by Trent Dalton, are both published by HarperCollins Australian and are available in all good bookshops.
Whether you’re thinking Christmas gift or holiday reading, Boy Swallows Universe is our Book of the Month for December — and Sunday Book Club members get it for a 30 per cent discount by heading to Booktopia and using the code BCBT18. Remember you can discuss Trent’s books and more at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.
- Reporting by Amy Lees
Originally published as Trent Dalton tackles First Fleet in second book By Sea and Stars
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