Trent Dalton is a divisive author – people seem to either love or hate him. I have had a crush since hearing him interviewed for Adelaide Writers Festival back in 2019. He was so earnest, sentimental and open. Lola in the Mirror is Daltons latest novel and has a good dose of his signature magical realism, which I love. The story takes place in the lead up, during, and after massive floods in Brisbane.

Mum never told me where she was born or how, or who her parents were. The past is dangerous for girls on the lam. I think she was born from a rock fertilised by a rainbow. 

The protagonist is a 17 year old girl with no name, living homeless with her mother since she left her partner with a paring knife in his neck to escape a domestic violence situation. They live in a 1987 Toyota HiAce van with flat tyres parked in a scrapyard besides the Brisbane river surrounded by a community of other homeless people. The girl is a talented drawer and dreams of becoming a famous artist exhibiting in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She said my father was a good man on the outside, but it had taken her too long to see his insides. She said you gotta be married to a man at least five years before you really see his insides. She said sometimes you can find a light inside a feller that burns so bright that it starts to burn inside you, too. But all my mum found inside my dad was black monster blood. 

The magical realism comes in when the girl looks into an old mirror she picked up from a kerbside rubbish collection and sees the reflection of an older woman. Sometimes the woman is glamorous, sometimes bruised and broken, but the girl finds solace in her presence.

Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what’s my future? What’s my past?

Themes include homelessness, friendship, domestic violence, family dynamics, addiction, crime, and the impact of natural disasters. A whimsical, sometimes sentimental tale of good prevailing over evil, and the transformative power of art.