Book Reviews
Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder, and then hammers you with heartbreak.… Eli’s remarkably poetic voice and his astonishingly open heart take the day. They enable him to carve out the best of what’s possible from the worst of what is, which is the miracle that makes this novel marvelous.
Washington Post
A splashy, profane, and witty debut.
USA Today
Welcome to the weird and wonderful universe of Trent Dalton, whose first work of fiction is, without exaggeration, the best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade.… The last 100 pages of Boy Swallows Universe propel you like an express train to a conclusion that is profound and complex and unashamedly commercial.… The book is jam-packed with such witty and profound insights into what’s wrong and what’s right with Australia and the world.… I read it in two sittings and immediately want to read it again. In its deft integration of the sacred and the profane, of high ideals and low villainy, it somehow reminded me of a favorite French movie, Diva. A rollicking ride, rich in philosophy, wit, truth and pathos.
Sydney Morning Herald
It is such a pleasant shock to encounter a new Australian novel in which joy is shamelessly deployed.… It is a story in thrall to the potential the world holds for lightness, laughter, beauty, forgiveness, redemption, and love.… [Dalton] invests this unlikely cast and milieu with considerable energy, wit and charm. He delights in the play of language and imagination that a child can summon: the sense in which the clear moral eye of youth can critique and adore simultaneously without judgment or adult moral finessing.
The Australian
A wonderful surprise: sharp as a drawer full of knives in terms of subject matter; unrepentantly joyous in its child’s-eye view of the world; the best literary debut in a month of Sundays.
Weekend Australian
(Starred review) [A] splashy, stellar debut makes the typical coming-of-age novel look bland by comparison.… Dalton’s… observant eye [and] ability to temper pathos with humor… prevent the novel from breaking into sparkling pieces.… [O]utstanding.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) A marvelously plot-rich novel, which…is filled with beautifully lyric prose…. Exceptional
Booklist
[M]agical elements promised in the novel’s early pages,… either get abandoned or turn out to be relatively pedantic matters of interpretation. A likable debut that trades its early high-flown ambitions for dramatic but familiar coming-of-age fare.
Kirkus Reviews