{"id":151086,"date":"2023-11-01T08:05:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T22:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/?p=151086"},"modified":"2025-04-25T11:30:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:30:29","slug":"lola-in-the-mirror-trent-dalton-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/lola-in-the-mirror-trent-dalton-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Lola in the Mirror (Trent Dalton) – book review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Australian author Trent Dalton is probably best known for his bestselling debut Boy Swallows Universe which has now also been adapted for TV for Netflix. That book, and the one that followed, All Our Shimmering Skies, was narrated by a teenager, so it is perhaps no surprise that his latest book Lola in the Mirror, also has a teenage protagonist narrator. A narrator who suffered from an even more traumatic childhood than Eli, the narrator of Boy Swallows Universe, also has an artistic pursuit to sustain her and maintains an optimistic outlook on life that pulls her through some particularly dark moments and revelations.<\/p>\n

The narrator of Lola in the Mirror does not have a name. Her mother has not told her what her name is in case they are discovered by the authorities for the killing of her husband. The two live in a disused van in the yard of an old panelbeaters in Brisbane with a few other homeless (or \u2018houseless\u2019) people. They have been there for about seven years after many years on the run, drifting around Australia. The girl is an artist, and it is her art and an imagined commentary on it from the future, that prefaces each chapter. Her dream is to one day exhibit her drawings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. But she has to get through the day-to-day grind of survival on the street, including working for a local drug dealer, before she can get there.<\/p>\n

Dalton was a former journalist and spent some of his time on the beat in Brisbane chronicling the lives of the homeless and addicted. He brings that experience and knowledge into this book, painting a picture of a community forced to live on the fringes of the city that has come together by a combination of personal circumstance and government policy. It is these side stories and characters, although sometimes idealised, more than the main narrative, that make Lola in the Mirror interesting. The main narrative is the issue \u2013 with its good guys and bad guys, cliched teen love story and mystery element and resolution all told in Dalton\u2019s na\u00efve style. It keeps the book ticking over but is nothing particularly revelatory and, unless the reader buys into it, hard to deeply engage with.<\/p>\n

In the end Lola in the Mirror is what might well be described as a three-hanky weepie. Dalton knows how to push emotional buttons. He does it with particular skill and many readers have responded and continue to respond to that. But the melodrama overpowers the social comment \u2013 a reflection of the real destitution, addiction and pain \u2013 by placing it in an almost magical-realist version of Brisbane. Dalton has said that this may be the last of his teen-narrated books, which are partly based on his experiences as a child and young man and, in a sense, his own journey into the arts. It will be interesting to what he produces if he shrugs off the shield of childhood naivete.<\/p>\n

Robert Goodman
\nFor more of Robert’s reviews, visit his blog Pile By the Bed<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian author Trent Dalton is probably best known for his bestselling debut Boy Swallows Universe which has now also been adapted for TV for Netflix. That book, and the one that followed, All Our Shimmering Skies, was narrated by a teenager, so it is perhaps no surprise that his latest book Lola in the Mirror,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[802],"tags":[48,117,15,28,3500,6873],"class_list":["post-151086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-australian","tag-book-review","tag-books","tag-brisbane","tag-fiction-review","tag-trent-dalton"],"yoast_head":"\nLola in the Mirror (Trent Dalton) - book review -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the end, Lola in the Mirror might well be described as a three-hanky weepie - Trent Dalton knows how to push emotional buttons\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/lola-in-the-mirror-trent-dalton-book-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lola in the Mirror (Trent Dalton) - 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It must have been a daunting prospect for playwright Tim McGarry to adapt the sprawling saga of nearly 500 pages for the stage, but if any doubts existed that his beloved story could morph successfully\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Theatre"","block_context":{"text":"Theatre","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/category\/theatre\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/rsz_6986e940af74e7e1686a14a1ba8b2401.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/rsz_6986e940af74e7e1686a14a1ba8b2401.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/rsz_6986e940af74e7e1686a14a1ba8b2401.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/rsz_6986e940af74e7e1686a14a1ba8b2401.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":160779,"url":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/trent-daltons-love-stories-brisbane-festival-and-qpac-theatre-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":151086,"position":1},"title":"Trent Dalton\u2019s Love Stories (Brisbane Festival and QPAC) – theatre review","author":"Meredith Walker","date":"September 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"As a pre-show soundtrack reminds us, love is a drug, a crazy little thing and the thing of which sweet dreams are made. 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While the story is ostensibly about the eponymous woman, who never otherwise has a name, it is narrated by another woman who calls herself \u201cthe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Woman-Purple-Skirt-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":151790,"url":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/stone-yard-devotional-charlotte-wood-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":151086,"position":3},"title":"Stone Yard Devotional (Charlotte Wood) – book review","author":"Robert Goodman","date":"November 29, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Award winning Australian author Charlotte Wood takes her main character to a retreat in her latest book Stone Yard Devotional. Set in a small, humble monastery in the Monaro high country near Australia\u2019s Snowy Mountains mainly during the Covid years, the book follows one woman\u2019s search for meaning and a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Stone-Yard-Devotional.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":144637,"url":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/weasels-in-the-attic-hiroko-oyamada-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":151086,"position":4},"title":"Weasels in the Attic (Hiroko Oyamada) – book review","author":"Robert Goodman","date":"March 1, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"At 80 pages, Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (translated by David Boyd) is more a novella than a novel. But Oyamada manages to pack a punch into this brevity. The three connected stories that make up the novel explore issues of parenthood and responsibility from a Japanese perspective.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Weasels-Attic.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":118808,"url":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/open-water-caleb-azumah-nelson-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":151086,"position":5},"title":"Open Water (Caleb Azumah Nelson) – book review","author":"Robert Goodman","date":"February 24, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Caleb Azumah Nelson\u2019s debut novel Open Water is a deeply personal exploration of the connection between two people and whether that connection can survive the pressures of the world. It is clearly, from the first page, a love story, but it is much more than that, as Nelson considers what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Open-Water.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}