Jan 13, 2026
Trent Dalton's semi-autobiographical novel Boy Swallows Universe received so many accolades that I had to buy a copy. And then I heard lots of commentary about how it was a bit too fascist-adjacent for many people's taste. This put me off reading it for a while, and then when the Netflix series was released I avoided watching that too, not wanting to spoil my reading of the book. I finally got around to reading it, and now I'm watching the Netflix series. I'm going to say what I think about it all, without trying too hard to explain it to you, so if you haven't read or watched then this may make limited sense, and there may be some spoilers - up to you.
The best part of the book for me was how true to its setting it was. I grew up in Brisbane roughly ten years ahead of Trent Dalton, and I know all the places mentioned. His description of 80s Brisbane seems exactly right to me, down to the Malvern Star bikes and the Hava Heart ice creams from Peters. It was a trip, reliving that part of my childhood. The dialect was also exactly right - "normal" Brisbane people really did speak like that, and probably do (I live on the wrong side of the ocean these days so can't say for sure).
The tenor of the book didn't seem all that right-wing to me. I suppose given the author's main source of income prior to becoming a successful novelist was writing for Rupert Murdoch's papers one might expect it, and he certainly doesn't show much interest in left-wing pre-occupations. It's true for example that there isn't much of a role for government in the lives of the characters of this book - but I don't recall government touching my life much either when I was a kid. Joh Bjelke Petersen was premier of Queensland and just wasn't into touching people's lives except by encouraging cranes on the skyline in the city, or by having them arrested if they protested too publicly. Successive federal governments showed little interest in Queensland because they took Queensland votes for granted, either for or against, so didn't make much effort. I recall a rare visit Bob Hawke paid to Queensland when he was visibly annoyed at being reminded about local issues that he clearly just did not want to engage with. I don't recall Malcolm Fraser ever visiting Queensland during his term in office, though perhaps he did and I wasn't aware at the time. In a book telling a story set in that time-frame, a distant and nebulous government is just how it was. The characters in the book use public facilities all the time, of course, like trains and public schools, but just seem to take them for granted as most Australians do.
There has also been criticism about lack of ethnic diversity in the book. Now I'm generally very much in favour of ethnic diversity, but this seems badly misplaced. Brisbane in the 80s was a fairly white place. There was a Vietnamese community around Darra and Inala, as depicted in the book. There were a few Chinese people about, and a Chinese restaurant on every street corner. Thai cuisine was just starting to take off in the early 80s - the usual model from my observation was Thai woman chef and white Australian husband managing the restaurant - still a common model. You would meet the occasional Indian or Sri Lankan, though they weren't present in huge numbers. There were lots of Europeans, including poms like my parents, thanks to post-ww2 migration. And of course plentiful New Zealanders, including Maoris. If you spent time at Musgrave Park you would see the occasional aborigine - sadly you would rarely encounter them elsewhere in Brisbane at the time. Most people were white, however, descendants of British and Irish immigrants in generations past. The ethnic mix depicted in the book rings true to me - that's what it was like. You might personally wish for more diversity but if you set a story in a particular place and time you have to show what it was like. The author does not deserve that particular criticism.
So the setting gave me warm feelings of nostalgia, and I think the criticisms have overstated their points. Apart from that, I'm a bit ambivalent about it. The story itself wasn't terrible, but it didn't really grab hold of me. Maybe because I lived in a rather nicer part of Brisbane than Darra, I couldn't relate to the harder parts of the characters' lives. The plot got a bit too involved to seem real. The bit about the red telephones didn't work for me, it either needed more explanation or the cutting room floor. Gus as a character was clearly a clever and capable fellow in all sorts of ways, but somehow seemed to have so much less agency than Eli - main character syndrome I suppose, but it's helpful if the author can avoid making it so obvious. The vivid depiction of the setting was enough for me to enjoy reading it, so for me the balance is still positive. I would recommend this book to anyone else who grew up in Brisbane at about that time, or wants to know what Brisbane was like then, but I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone else.
The Netflix series misses the one single thing I most liked about the book - bringing 80s Brisbane to life. It just doesn't get it right. I gather Trent Dalton was involved with the production, but presumably they didn't listen carefully enough to his advice. Just so little attention to detail. Some examples: you don't go anywhere near the Darra Cement Factory on the way from their house to Darra State School. I presume they wanted to show the cement works to establish the setting, but failed. They refer to Darra as a "town", which it isn't, it's a suburb in the City of Brisbane. I suppose many Americans wouldn't understand the way Australia does suburbs as defined localities within a city, but is it worth wrecking the realness of the story for that? And even though America doesn't have suburbs as well-defined as Australia does, there are still named regions within cities (I live in one such) so the idea isn't completely alien. It seems like a failed attempt to pander to Americans and build the international audience. The dialect of the characters isn't quite right - and none of the characters really seems to inhabit the culture, they don't speak as though what they are saying is natural to them. I guess the actors aren't Brissos, but I'm sure they are all competent and capable of being educated given the right dialect coaching and good scripting. Bryan Brown of course plays his character the way he normally does, and it works well enough here. The Maori family are supposed to live in Jamboree Heights, but their house looks like it's a long way out of town - definitely not Jamboree Heights. Where on Earth is Slim's caravan supposed to be and how do the boys manage to ride their bikes there? The riverside jetty where Slim is fishing I guess could be somewhere on one of the Pine Rivers, but isn't in any way distinctive. In the book Eli meets Slim on the Hornibrook bridge, which is a real place and also an interesting one - much better than some fairly anonymous place that could be anywhere in Australia. When the boys move in with their dad they are in Bracken Ridge, which is a long way from Darra, but Netflix would prefer us to believe it's right next door, with the same public school and the same teachers. Real places make the story real - and the converse, fake places make a less real story. I have to presume the team making the series didn't know the places, so dismissed their significance, losing a lot in the process. A real eye-sore is the buses. Brisbane buses have always had a distinctive appearance - they used to be mostly orange, these days they are blue. So maybe not distinctively different from, say, Sydney buses, but very different from the generic grey buses that Netflix decided to deploy for the purpose. Maybe this all seems a bit nitpicky, but it's important - details make the place real, as Eli himself knew very well because various other characters kept lecturing him about it.
Given that Netflix tossed out the best thing the book did, what is left doesn't really stand up. It's painful to think about the resources deployed in making a TV series but missing the opportunity to make something good. All they had to do was just not stuff it up.