Published by Harper Collins, October 2023 | Fiction, Australian author A striking pen and ink drawing hits you on page one of Trent Dalton’s latest novel Lola in the Mirror. The drawing, titled The Tyrannosaurus Waltz, shows a girl in a kitchen standing, tensely poised, opposite a suited man with the head of a dinosaur.
Overleaf, a brief descriptive label provides clues about the illustration’s artist, who we learn is also the novel’s protagonist, a 17-year-old girl, living rough with her mother in a clapped out van in a scrapyard in Brisbane’s West End. It also says, ominously, it was drawn less than two years before the young artist was shot. It’s the first of many expressive illustrations marking the beginning of each chapter, grimly signalling what’s in store for this young woman, who’s been on the run with her mum, living as fugitives, for as long as she can remember. Her mum, who she adores, provides sparse details about the past (not even sharing their real names). All the girl really knows is that they have spent their lives fleeing from something unspeakable, steeped in violence inflicted by the Tyrannosaurus-headed man depicted in the first illustration. As she is compelled to uncover the truth of her past, we suffer and speculate alongside her, often wondering whether she’ll be catapulted out of the invisibility of her homeless life towards her dream of becoming a famous artist, or, as foreshadowed, towards death. Through her story, Dalton, who shot to fame in 2019 with bestselling debut, Boy Swallows Universe, opens a window to the violence, addiction, self-harm and stark choices prevalent in the lives of the homeless people he met as a social affairs journalist for almost two decades. He underscores the plight of too many women (like his own mum) who are fleeing - or being murdered by - their domestic abusers. But it wouldn’t be a Dalton novel without the balance of ”community, hope and love“, which he says in his forward he also observed on the streets. Those traits he’s become known for - the mystical, the whimsical, the wonderous, sentimental and the beautiful - are also there in buckets. Indeed the Lola of the novel’s title is a vision in the protagonist’s mirror in whom she confides, taking solace, comfort and advice. The girl is also surrounded by a chorus of colourful characters, from her goofy goon-swigging best mate Charlie, to reclusive Esther who lives in a hole under the church, to the matronly, sneaker-wearing, murderous drug queen Lady Flo Box. (Also, look out for the cameo Dalton plays towards the novel’s end.) Despite its grittiness, sentimentality, and over-the-top-ness (in which belief definitely has to be suspended), Lola in the Mirror contains some charming elements, one of the most memorable being the artist’s habit of living every moment as if its significance will be written about and remembered 100 years from now. Comments are closed.
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