Lola in the Mirror, Trent Dalton, Australia, 2023
This is a marvellous book that brings to life the underside of Brisbane – the people who, in many respects, are invisible to the majority of so-called ordinary people. Like Boy Swallows Universe, this is a book that is direct and honest. Dalton’s superb knowledge, not only of the people on the bottom rungs of society but also of all the streets and buildings and nooks and crannies that make up Queensland’s capital city, is remarkable. His understanding, awareness and humanity shines through on every page. The sentimentality (and it does exist) is, in the main, fairly well balanced by in-your-face reality.
Halfway through the book one of the characters asks: ‘What’s the meaning of life?’ and the main character, the girl with no name, replies ‘… it’s to love as many people as you can before you die. And to let as many people as you can love you back.’ Simplified, this is a book about our basic need for love and friendship; it is a book about what is really important when you peel away all the unessentials like money and status and possessions. It is a book that can be read and appreciated on a number of different levels, just like society itself.
The girl-without-a-name, who is 17 years old, lives with her mother in a Toyota HiAce van that has four flat tyres. They have spent years running across the country, fleeing from what is understood to be domestic violence and something the mother did years previously and does not talk about. In Brisbane they have found a reasonably secure haven in a scrapyard with a number of other people also living in broken-down vehicles. But, without warning, the girl’s mother dies and the girl-without-a-name, suddenly alone in the world and grief-stricken, sets about discovering what she is actually called – she has had many different names, but none of them have actually been hers.
Offered work as a drug runner by a woman who professes to have her well-being at heart, the girl gradually realises that safety is no longer something that can be taken for granted, and she turns to a strange friend, Lola, for questionable support. Whether Lola, who exists in a discarded mirror, is make-believe or whether she is a reflection of the girl herself depends on the reader’s own understanding. Sketching everything around her, letting pen and paper absorb her frustration, her fear and her grief, the girl’s dream is to one day be a renowned artist exhibiting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this dream helps her make some sense of things that seem senseless.
Written from the perspective of the girl-without-a-name the writing is brilliant. It is immediate, filled with life, colour, movement and compassion. At the same time it is bluntly honest – and often uncomfortably raw – both visually and verbally. Each chapter begins with a black-and-white sketch (done by Paul Heppell but accredited to the girl-without-a-name) and is followed by a short text explaining the sketch for a retrospective exhibition in the year 2100 of artworks done by the artist (that is to say, the girl-without-a-name). A quirky and yet interesting addition to the story.
Dalton does not downplay the cruelty and violence of the mongrels that exist in our society – described as monsters or tyrant lizards – preying on the down-and-out. Present-day Brisbane is front and centre – the housing crisis, the floods, the upcoming Olympic Games (impacting the underprivileged), addiction, inequality… The characters, occasionally without any modifying grey tones, are at all times life-like and engaging, and even for readers not acquainted with Brisbane Dalton has managed to create a vibrant story with an undercurrent of magic realism. This is not a book that you will forget in a hurry.
