Boy Swallows Universe is a bildungsroman about someone weathering the storm and becoming a good person despite everything.
Boy Swallows Universe Synopsis
A novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane’s violent working class suburban fringe – from one of Australia’s most exciting new writers.
Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It’s not as if Eli’s life isn’t complicated enough already. He’s just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way – not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.
But if Eli’s life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He’s about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.
A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.
Book Review of Boy Swallows Universe
“Your end is a dead blue wren. Boy swallows universe. Caitlyn spies. No doubt about it. These are the answers. The answers to the questions.”
Kinda cryptical right? This is the plot of the book in a nutshell. For an explanation, please read the book. I can recommend it!
The first 50 or so pages of Boy Swallows Universe took me a long time as I was reading only one or two chapters a day. This was partly because I was tired (not the book’s fault) and partly because the setting of the book was different from what I usually read about. But then the story grabbed me and led me to a very good finale. Many lingering questions were explained and the story had a fitting ending.
Boy Swallows Universe is a bildungsroman about someone weathering the storm and becoming a good person despite everything. The central question in this book is what it means to be a good person. Is it giving to charity or atoning, doing more good than bad or is simply trying your best and wanting to be good enough?
The main character of the book is Eli Bell. Eli is a very real and likable character. He’s not perfect, nor does he strive to be. He is a product of society and of his living environments Through him, we explore the suburbs of Brisbane: the good and the bad. We read about Polish and Vietnamese immigrants and about drug gangs ruling the suburbs.
At the start of the book, Eli is a young ten-year-old boy that is aware that his surroundings are not perfect. He asks people if they’re good and doesn’t think he is a particularly good person himself, but he tries and he keeps questioning. He is a very smart boy that sees a lot of details but he has no clue how normal kids grow up.
Guided by the chapter titles of the book we learn more about the kind of person Eli Bell is becoming. The titles explain him in three words like newspaper headlines try to summarize newsworthy items. A report of his life. Eli also has a story, one worthy of being in the news. He is one of those cases and he is increasingly aware of it. With him we try to swallow the world instead of being swallowed by it and even though he talks about what happened to him, in a way, he talks even less than his mute brother.
My favorite character in the book was Slim, the ex-convict turned babysitter for Eli and his brother August. His words inspired Eli to manipulate time and also served as a good reminder for me to turn inspiration into action. “Do your time before it does you. Make the sunshine hours go slow. Pretend you’re extremely busy with nonsense stuff to make time go faster.” Knowing the words are based on life in prison makes them even stronger.
Later in the book, we get some more quotes about time: “The greatest flaw of time is that it doesn’t exist”; we created the calendars after all, and “All of your life is leading up to tomorrow”.
The message: action, now!
Sleighbells ring, are you listening?
Gone away is the bluebird….
and your end is a dead blue wren.
Merry Christmas!
Interested in Boy Swallows Universe?
You can buy your copy of Boy Swallows Universe from Amazon.
