"Your end is a dead blue wren"

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm giving this debut novel 5 stars--I thought it was pretty brilliant overall. What a riotous, rockin', rambunctious affair--with so many colorful & memorable characters! I listened to the audiobook--borrowed from the library--and just couldn't get enough of the Aussie accents the narrator put into the characters. The story revolves around a Brisbane (Queensland) family with 2 sons--August (Gus) and Eli Bell. Their broken family has had its ups & downs--prison sentences, drug dealing, divorce, alcoholism, etc. Eli--the protagonist--is determined to get beyond his family's craziness & to become a journalist (and buy a nice house in the suburbs, where they have lots of cul-de-sacs). It's quite an adventure--including interactions with Brisbane's shady underground drug dealers and body guards, etc. Some shady deals and characters. But Eli wants to be get beyond that--and wants to be "good." He often asks characters in the book if they are "good people." His heart, from an early age, is set palpitating by a female crime-reporting journalist, who Eli longs to connect & work with. And you'll just have to see how the story turns out for the young whippersnapper..."Your end is a dead blue wren." Read it to find out how the mystery unfolds...


View all my reviews