All Our Shimmering Skies

Absolutely epic story telling about a wonderful concoction of historical facts and fiction with more than enough friction to warm the cockles of any heart felt feelings about our wonderful country and its vast breadth and depth of its heritage!

A very engaging and original well written story. Probably too many metaphors for me on occasions, and a few diversions that bordered on fantasy (e.g. the undead) but enjoyable nevertheless

After ‘Boy..’ I expected better.

What a fantastic and most brilliant story! The characters, the good, the bad and the evil are depicted so well and realistic that you can see and feel them! The sceneries, caves, the fantastical creatures and people were just amazing! I felt I was on the journey with the gravedigger girl too!! Loved it - must read!

Awe inspiring. Brilliant. An exhilarating journey through history and the spectacular Northern Territory and its people. Very enjoyable.

A true writer.

I knew this book would overcome me, that I would be completely consumed by it and I was right. I was completely transfixed by molly hook, by Greta maze and Yukio., who i so desperately wanted to live happily ever after. The description of the Australian bush, the respect for the aboriginal people in every word, and the almost unbearable anguish you can’t help but feel for Molly’s plight... a beautiful amazing story. As amazing as boy swallows universe, but more delicate, definitely more graceful. Thank you for your beautiful work that will stay with me also, forever. Now that I’ve skimmed along it at 1000kmph, I am going back to saviour it more slowly, all over again.

These characters are so real I feel like I’ll find them travelling up north one day. Heartbreaking and joyous and hopeful.

Beautiful story of life, loss, hope, self belief and discovery and love in all its forms. Many thanks.

Impossible to take in the whole plot at first read, but a slower re-read brings clarity and extra delight in the writing and joy in the natural world in the Northern Territory

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book all the way past acknowledgments. This book I savoured every last word wishing it would never end

Author Australian journalist turned novelist. His debut Boy Swallows Universe (2018) received widespread critical praise (including from numerous ABC journos even though he works for Murdoch), won numerous awards, sold by the shedload, and has been published in over 30 countries so far. A screen adaptation is rumoured to be in the works. The pressure to come up with the goods in his sophomore effort must have been immense. Plot The setting is the Northern Territory close to Darwin, the time the late 1930s and early 1940s, including when large parts of the city got flattened by Japanese bombing. The chief protagonist Molly Hook is seven when we meet her and 13 by the end. She lives with her parents and her paternal uncle in the caretaker’s house in a cemetery and learns to dig graves at any early age. Territorians are a eccentric lot, but even they think young Mol is a bit odd. Hint: her best friend is her shovel! However, her Mum engenders in her a fondness for Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, and Franz Liszt, as well as what, with apologies to Norman Greenbaum, I’ll call the spirit in the sky, the titular simmering one. After Mum dies by her own hand, Molly soldiers on through considerable domestic violence from her father Horace and uncle Aubrey, both alcoholic, who maintain her mother’s side of the family was cursed in perpetuity by an Aboriginal shaman named Longcoat Bob. In another era, he might have appeared on the cover of the Sgt Pepper album, but I digress. After the bombing, which kills her Dad and leaves her uncle even more unbalanced than he was, Molly sallies forth into “deep country” to find the aforementioned dude in the thrift shop coat and persuade him to remove the curse on her family. She is aided in this endeavour by an actress named Greta and a Japanese fighter pilot named Yukio who dropped out of the aforementioned shimmering sky in a parachute, cementing Molly’s faith in it as a source of beneficence. Things get weird after that. Difficult to imagine, I know. Lucky for us Mr Dalton has imagination to burn. Narrative Third person from Molly’s POV mainly Characters Stand back and think about them and none are credible, but in the context of Mr D’s story telling, they work. Molly is sympathetic, despite her rejection of sympathy (When she says she’s hard hearted, she means literally as in a rock). Prose It is clear from Mr D’s long form journalism, as well as from his first novel, that he is a keen observer of both people and place. Not only that, he is able to translate those observations in a unique and moving way: the mark of a gifted stylist. Some passages here felt overwritten, although not enough to detract significantly from the overall quality of the writing. Mr D also showed deft touch with his magic realism, but I found the text unnecessarily repetitious in places. Bottom line I was underwhelmed by Boy Swallows Universe when I first read it. Worried that I must have missed something given the exuberance of the reception the book received subsequently, I read it again almost a year later with the same result, albeit with greater respect for the author’s technical ability. That respect increased this time around. I liked the story better too, although I thought it was 50 to 100 pages too long. Note Norman Greenbaum, the one hit wonder singer-songwriter who gave the world Spirit In The Sky in 1970, was born in 1942, the same year as Darwin was bombed. Spooky, eh?

Great one!