‘My most personal book’: Inside Trent Dalton's raw new book about marriage in the Australian suburbs

At 46, celebrated storyteller Trent Dalton reckons with life’s big questions in his most intimate novel about marriage and morality in the Australian suburbs.

In his new novel, journalist and bestselling author Trent Dalton explores some of the issues of regret and realisation that stem from his own life experiences. Picture: Love Stepha

They should call the mid-40s The Reckoning.

It’s around that point that people start to ask themselves: what have I been like as a partner, as a parent, as a citizen of the world?

What failings do I have, what mistakes have I made? How might I do more good in the world, maybe even alleviate some pain?

Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton

Writer Trent Dalton freely admits he is trying to answer those questions in his new novel Gravity Let Me Go (HarperCollins), the first chapter of which is available exclusively to readers of The Australian.

Dalton, 46, has a gorgeous wife, Fi, a couple of fine kids, and a great deal of professional success.

He’s won awards for his storytelling and he’s had many books published … but has he really been “fighting the good fight” as a working journalist?

Or has he been sticking his nose into other people’s trauma, compounding their grief, for the sake of entertainment?

Can both things be true, at the same time?

“This is my most personal book,” Dalton says ahead of Gravity’s release on September 30. “I have been obsessive about work. I have been consumed by the stories I’ve told (for The Australian Weekend Magazine and, before that, for the Courier-Mail).

“I know other journalists who are the same: the story is all that matters. And it does matter. But we have to be honest about the cost. There is the personal cost, to relationships around us. And there is a wider cost. So this is a marriage story, buried inside a murder mystery.

“So it’s got everything that I love about life in the Australian suburbs, and it’s my little tribute to my obsession with journalism and my obsession with storytelling. I’m a little bit worried about it, because it’s close to the bone, the story of a journalist who is so obsessed with the story that he’s in danger of missing what’s right in front of him.”

Journalist and author Trent Dalton says his new book, Gravity Let Me Go, is his most personal and intimate novel yet. Picture: Love Stepha

Dalton, 46, is one of the eight million Australians who has chosen marriage as a vehicle to navigate life, and he says: “I think they are an interesting group of people to explore. My own wife, I’ve watched her do amazing things. I watched her form two amazing human beings inside her. I wanted to lean into what is amazing and miraculous about the ordinary daily life of people in the suburbs.

“I’m also very interested in that thing us blokes do, where we alienate ourselves from our own love stories. And it’s me just trying to be honest with myself, too, about the cost, or the impact, of journalism, because I have done things that I feel guilty about.

“I’m so much more careful now than I was in my 20s because I think I’ve hurt people. I have had people say to me, ‘I don’t want to chat, don’t come to my house’, and as you get older, you become more careful about the things you do, and the words you write. I wanted to explore the story of a journalist who finds himself confronted with people’s pain in that way.”