Boy Swallows Universe
by Trent Dalton (4th Estate, 2018); audiobook read by Stig Wemyss (Bolinda, 2018)
Dalton paints a detailed, unromanticised picture of Brisbane in the 1980s. The story is a slowly unfolding epic, neatly plotted, with great attention to character, yet the writing’s unremitting descriptive slather evokes in its consumption the cloying regret of eating cheesecake nonstop.