Trent Dalton’s forthcoming novel is his most personal yet
If this announcement – wait, what, a new Trent Dalton novel?! – seems to have come out of nowhere, it has. Few people knew Trent Dalton was writing another book, and he says it came out of him like a fever breaking.
There’s an old picture book by Dr Seuss, designed to encourage youngsters as they take their first steps into adulthood, and it goes something like this:
You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your Day!
Your Mountain is Waiting.
So, Get on your Way!
The writer, Trent Dalton seized on that idea. He was determined to climb out of the poverty and instability of his Brisbane childhood into the world of letters, and there’s no question that he has succeeded. More than 1.8 million copies of his award-winning books (fiction and nonfiction) have been sold in Australia, and Boy Swallows Universe, the TV series based on his first novel, was the most successful Australian-made Netflix show, ever.
And how does it feel? Awkward, mostly.
“I don’t want to sound like a cliche, but it was like my childhood had filled me with an insatiable ambition that I’m almost embarrassed about, and when I had success, I turned around and realised that what really mattered, I already had,” he says. “It was in my kitchen, all along. It was my family.”
Dalton, 46, is in a reflective mood ahead of the release of his surprise fourth novel, Gravity Let Me Go, which will be out in October. If that announcement – wait, what, a new Trent Dalton novel?! – seems to have come out of nowhere, it has. Few people knew he was writing another book, and he says it came out of him like a fever breaking.
“It’s my most personal book yet,” he says, “and I can’t deny that it’s come out of my recent experiences. It’s me, working out what’s going on in my life, as I make my way through it.”
The main character, Noah Cork, is a journalist (like Dalton) and a married father of two (like Dalton) living in the suburbs of Brisbane (ditto). Cork becomes obsessed with the “true-crime scoop of his lifetime” and in the process, he almost loses sight of “what’s most important”.
Like Dalton?
“Yes, like me. It’s about the cost of ambition and the cost of dreams,” he says.
Dalton’s publisher at HarperCollins, Catherine Milne, says: “There is darkness in this story, but it is riven with light and hope. And love runs right the way through it.”
Dalton will be well known to many readers as a preternaturally talented storyteller, first for The Courier-Mail and then for The Weekend Australian Magazine. His long-time colleagues, who met him when he was still in his 20s, remember him as something like an Energizer bunny, buzzing with enthusiasm for stories. He had adrenaline, energy, purpose and the ability to core his way into his subjects, finding the chips in their armour and the bruises beneath their skin. It always seemed so effortless, the way he’d unfurl his glorious magazine pieces. Readers would weep over their cornflakes.
In his mid-30s, Dalton turned the story of his own life – Mum in prison for dealing drugs, and Dad just a few steps behind – into the novel called Boy Swallows Universe, which hit every nerve in the Australian psyche. It sold and sold and sold, becoming in the process a cultural phenomenon.
He has since written two more novels – All Our Shimmering Skies, about a girl in search of security and happiness; and Lola in the Mirror, about homelessness in the lucky country; and a nonfiction book, Love Stories, which got him thinking about his own luck with love.
Besides a career, Dalton has built a home, a life, a family. He has a tendency to beat himself up for occasionally taking his eye off the fact they, not his work, are the most important things in his life.
“I wrote this new novel because I was thinking a lot about long-term marriage, the wonder and complexity of it,” he says. “My family gave me a reason to try hard at life, and part of that was about doing the right thing by my family. I wanted them – the girls – to know they are loved, but also they will not be hungry. You will have opportunities. I won’t let you down. But I wonder sometimes if I got lost in my ambition.
“My wife made me strong as a writer, you know? She really did. And she’s seen everything that’s come with that and dealt with it beautifully and so supportively. But I’m exploring the cost of my success, too.
“Journalism became my great freaking life raft, and that’s what I’m exploring in this book, too. This journalist, Noah, has a true-crime scoop of his lifetime, but he’s in danger of missing an even bigger scoop, that his own wife is changing.
“And so, very early on in the book, he wakes up one morning, goes for a shower, sees steam gathering on his bathroom mirror, and there’s a message in the mirror that says: gravity let me go. And he thinks, who wrote that?
“It has to be one of the three women he lives with. His wife and two daughters, but which one, and is it a statement, or is it a request?” Dalton says all of his work is “absolutely me, documenting my time on Earth right now. Me, totally addressing all my failings, trying to explore myself via the stories of real people, and fictional characters.
“This guy, in this new book, he’s overlooking the important things in his life, and that’s something I will state right upfront that I’m guilty of, particularly over the past six years, I’ve been conscious of standing in the kitchen and my family might be talking to me, and you’re thinking about your fictional characters, too caught up in your own imagination.”
If money were the only thing that mattered in life – and for Dalton, as for most people, it really is not – he could quit writing. He has made enough money to keep his kids out of poverty. But, he says, “writing for me is like pickleball for somebody else. That’s my relaxation. Getting into that flow state, lost in the novel, is a really lovely place, and that can be the problem, because sometimes you want to stay in that place.
“And that was really brought home to me, when I came up from work one night, and one of my daughters was a bit upset, and we sat in a little corner together, and I was like, ‘Hey, what’s going on? You haven’t been yourself lately?’ And she goes – this great sort of coming down to earth for me – she, this 10-year-old girl, says, ‘I don’t know, Dad, I just feel like we’re not as close as we once were.’“And it was gutting. And now, five years later, she’ll say, ‘Oh I didn’t mean that, not really.’ But, you know, there was truth in that. And it was such a great thing, and it’s no surprise that (that message) crept into my fiction.”
Dalton says his main character is slow to see “changes in the woman he fell in love with. Because women do change, and this character’s wife, she needs to change, and she needs to transform, and you know, that’s at the heart of this book.
“That’s the great mystery and you don’t even realise it until the final page just how much the woman in this guy’s life is going to change. And there will be people who think the book is dark in places, and it is, because life can be dark. Right across Australia now, so many people are hanging on to whatever light they can find, because, honestly, the alternative is bourbon, but I guess anyone who knows me will also know that I’m also trying to help my characters find the light, because I can’t stay in worlds of darkness for too long.
“I’m always offering them some sort of rope to grab, to pull themselves up, because that’s exactly what I’m doing, every time I write.”
HarperCollins Australia will publish Trent Dalton’s fourth novel, Gravity Let Me Go, on 30 September 30, 2025.
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