PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- A girl who has had many names, but doesn’t know her real one, lives with her mother in a van by the Brisbane River. She mightn’t know much about her real past, but she certainly knows what her future will be, and that vision - of being a world-famous artist with an exhibition at MoMA in New York - keeps her going through her tough and tragic circumstances. But even as she finds herself in trouble, she finds herself in love… Absolutely wonderful: heart-wrenching, comic, exuberant, vivid, sympathetic, colourful - another literary marvel from the author of Boy Swallows Universe. Lindy
Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, Lola in the Mirror is the irresistible new novel from the bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies, Trent Dalton.
"Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what's my future? What's my past?"
A girl and her mother have been on the run for 16 years - from police and from the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat. They've found themselves a home inside a van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River.
The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you're on the run. But the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen, 'Lady' Flora Box. A life of love with the boy who's waiting for her on the bridge that stretches across a flooding, deadly river. A life beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there's only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola, and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can ever do. She must look in the mirror.
Lola in the Mirror is a big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death, and all the things we see when we look in the mirror: all our past, all our present, and all our possible futures.
'Unpredictable, fantastic... It takes a charged narrative, like Dickens achieves, and as Dalton does too, to reach the heart and the brain - writing that is able to carry both stories, the individual and the political/personal... To tell you more would spoil this complicated and surprising story. You should read it.' - Sydney Morning Herald
'Trent Dalton's third novel reminds me of the 1980s advertising slogan for the author's home state of Queensland: "Beautiful one day, perfect the next"... This is a bold, big-hearted, hopeful, humorous, dark, reflective, truthful, superbly written novel that confirms Dalton's place in all the shimmering skies (to borrow the title of his second novel) of Australian literature. He is not a rising star, but a star full stop.' - The Australian
Trent Dalton is the author of Boy Swallows Universe (HarperCollins, 2018), the critically acclaimed international and national bestseller and winner of the 2019 Indie Book of the Year Award, the MUD Literary Prize, and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and People's Choice Award at the 2019 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. At the 2019 Australian Book Industry Awards, the novel won a record four awards, including the prestigious Book of the Year Award. Boy Swallows Universe has been published across thirty-four territories, and the 2021 stage show was a record-breaking success for Queensland Theatre. His second novel, All Our Shimmering Skies (HarperCollins, 2020), was a number-one national bestseller and was shortlisted for the 2021 ABIA Awards. His non-fiction book Love Stories (HarperCollins, 2021) was also a number-one Australian bestseller and the winner of the 2022 Indie Book of the Year Award. Trent is also a two-time winner of a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a four-time winner of a Kennedy Award for Excellence in NSW Journalism and a four-time winner of the national News Awards Features Journalist of the Year.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- A girl who has had many names, but doesn’t know her real one, lives with her mother in a van by the Brisbane River. She mightn’t know much about her real past, but she certainly knows what her future will be, and that vision - of being a world-famous artist with an exhibition at MoMA in New York - keeps her going through her tough and tragic circumstances. But even as she finds herself in trouble, she finds herself in love… Absolutely wonderful: heart-wrenching, comic, exuberant, vivid, sympathetic, colourful - another literary marvel from the author of Boy Swallows Universe. Lindy
