Boy Swallows Universe author Trent Dalton to release second novel

The Boy Swallows Universe author’s new novel is an odyssey-­adventure set during the bombing of Darwin.

Author Trent Dalton, who wrote Boy Swallows Universe, is to release his second novel next year. Picture: Russell Shakespeare

Bestselling author Trent Dalton has submitted the manuscript of his second novel, an odyssey-­adventure set during the bombing of Darwin and whose heroine is a 12-year-old girl on a quest to overcome the darkness and hardship that has blighted her young life.

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Her name is Molly Hook, motherless, raised by gravediggers and determined to break the curse that she believes a mysterious man called Longcoat Bob has put on her family.

“This girl’s life is so rough that you would forgive her for thinking that even the bombs falling on Darwin are because of her,” ­Dalton said.

His new novel, All Our Shimmering Skies, was completed in late September and publisher HarperCollins is expecting another bestseller when it is released in June.

Dalton’s first book, Boy Swallows Universe, has broken records as the fastest-selling debut novel by an Australian writer, selling 200,000 copies in 72 weeks. It has sold at least 300,000 copies in print, digital and audio formats.

If Molly Hook’s indomitable spirit sounds similar to that of the young hero Eli Bell in Boy Swallows Universe, it’s no coincidence.

Dalton said he was inspired by his youngest daughter, Sylvie, 10, who kept on hearing about Eli and eventually said to her dad: “Why don’t you write a book about two beautiful girls?”

In All Our Shimmering Skies, Molly forms an unlikely friendship with a sharp-talking actress called Greta.

“It is inspired by me wanting to write something for these two girls of mine,” Dalton said of ­Sylvie and older sister Beth, 12.

“It’s really filled with feminine strength, that thing I see in my wife (Fiona), and in my daughters — ‘I will never succumb’. It’s a ­really powerful thing.

“Molly and Greta do incredible things in this book, and I put it in there to show the girls, ‘Don’t ever think that you can’t be the hero of your story … This is what women can do, this is what you can do in times of hardship’.”

As Dalton celebrates completing his latest novel, the Boy Swallows Universe juggernaut keeps “chugging away”.

The novel is being made into a play for Queensland Theatre next year, and adapted for an inter­national six-part television series.

Sydney-based screenwriter John Collee (Master and Commander, Happy Feet) is writing the adaptation, and Dalton is an executive producer on the big-budget series with Joel Edgerton also working on the project.

Dalton recently took the filmmakers on a location-scouting tour of Brisbane.

“I took them to my old housing commission haunts, Bracken Ridge and Darra, and we took them to Boggo Road prison,” he said.

“They are pretty big-time Hollywood dudes and they’re taking notes about these places in suburban Brisbane.”