Meet the man who wrote your favourite book
He is the writer behind one of the most successful Australian novels of all time with female fans lining up for hours to meet him — so who exactly is Trent Dalton?
On one side of the bedroom door, a 13-year-old boy writes a short story in his notebook, finishes off a play for his three older brothers to act out, or maybe devours an old copy of Rolling Stone.
On the other side is chaos and danger in the form of a violent, drug-dealing stepfather, a heroin-addicted mother, their convicted-murderer friend or an alcoholic father.
“It was this housing commission shoebox on the outskirts of Brisbane, full of drink and drugs and violence and craziness,” recalls author and The Australian journalist Trent Dalton of the childhood home he’d turn into the setting for his first book decades later.
Boy Swallows Universe (HarperCollins, $19.99) was published last June, and became a phenomenon for Australian literature.
In a field stuffed with outback romances, historical epics and airplane-ready page-turners, Dalton’s strange and lovely coming-of-age novel stood out.
It has since sold more than 100,000 copies in Australia alone, been translated into 28 languages and praised by the likes of David Wenham, Tim Rogers and Nikki Gemmell.
Production companies are vying for film and theatre rights and Dalton’s events are immediate sell-outs at writers’ festivals, where crowds treat him like a Cleo Bachelor of the Year.
Earlier this month, the 40-year-old became the first-ever author to sweep the four main categories at the Australian Book Industry Awards, beating heavyweights such as Tim Winton and Markus Zusak.
“It wasn’t meant to go this way,” Dalton tells Stellar. “The universe definitely wasn’t saying, ‘You’ll get out.’ The natural thing would have been to go into the family business selling heroin.”
So how did he get out, anyway? “It sounds cheesy and Dead Poets Society, but I had an English teacher who told me, ‘You’re this sh*t of a kid, but you can actually write a bit. The thing that will take you out of this joint is those words.’ And that’s what happened: words. And in my case, the ability to string them together in attractive, hopefully powerful ways.
“It’s fair to say not everyone was reading Hemingway in the Bracken Ridge housing commission in ’80s Brisbane,” adds Dalton, who now lives in the city’s western suburbs with his wife Fiona Franzmann, a fellow journalist, and two daughters aged 12 and 10.
But the teetering pile of paperbacks that appears in Boy Swallows Universe did actually exist. “Even in the midst of violence, you had to be smart and well-read in our family. There’d be these masterful conversations going on around Sale Of The Century and I read to keep up.”
Dalton is a natural storyteller — ask question on any subject and you’ll get 10 minutes of freeform monologue, as funny and captivating as the stuff that fills the pages of Boy Swallows Universe.
Twelve-year-old protagonist Eli Bell “is a stronger and smarter and tougher kid than [I was],” he says.
But Eli is just as observant, and while the book is at times dark and confronting, at its core is a hopeful story about a boy who loves his brother and his mum, and yearns for a good dad, which is why Dalton believes it has connected with a broad audience.
The whirl of events and award ceremonies that came in the wake of its success formed what Dalton calls “this amazing year”.
Asked for a standout moment, he says, “Any time someone comes up and says ‘I need to tell you this’ — then shares something so deep and so meaningful to them. Forgive me if I sound like a tosser, but the book has taken on something bigger than me. That’s unbelievable. I definitely didn’t account for that.”
He resisted writing it for a long time, partly because he was terrified about revisiting his past and even more about upsetting his family: “The cost of that was really high in my mind. How ridiculous would it be if I get some literary award, but my brothers won’t have beers with me because I wrote this fricking book about our lives?”
Fortunately they approved, and his mother — long since recovered and now a doting grandmother — has relished in its success.
“She follows me on Twitter,” he says. “She’ll ring up and say, ‘Did you see the nice thing so-and-so said about us?’”
As for what it’s meant for his day job in journalism, Dalton — a two-time Walkley Award winner considered one of the best profile writers in the country — admits he grew anxious as the book neared publication and he was suddenly the one being asked all the questions.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he says. “It’s been a great trust-building exercise.”
Of his vocation, he adds, “You’re asking [other people] to open these windows into their souls. I’d go into living rooms, begging them to trust me to respect what comes out.”
Now when he interviews people, “The first half-hour is them wanting to talk about the book. They know where I’m coming from... because I f*cking laid it out. And there’s nothing bad about that.”
The only thing he regrets is that his father, who died from emphysema in 2014, missed out: “It’s my great tragedy that my old man isn’t here to see that book on the shelf.”
There can be pressure for first-time authors who garner wild acclaim to produce another bestseller of similar calibre — and just as much fear of a sophomore slump.
“That’s in the back of my mind,” admits Dalton. “But I figure I can go as big and bold and ambitious as I like because there’s nothing to lose. I was never meant to be here, anyway.”
And he is already in the thick of his next manuscript. “It’s about two beautiful girls in a world that is not very beautiful,” he explains, adding that it is a complete departure from Boy Swallows Universe.
At least in every way except one. “I believe in happy endings,” he says. “That’s my religion. A completely beautiful, satisfying ending.”
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