About the Book:
A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from police and 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.
From international bestselling author Trent Dalton, 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.
Published by HarperCollins Australia
Released October 2023
My Thoughts:
It seems as though everyone is raving about this novel. It's been highly anticipated and all I'm seeing in my bookstagram feed is post after post about how amazing this is, better than Boy Swallows Universe, he's done it again - you get the picture.
It took me weeks to read this. I found the first half of the book challenging to get into. Dalton has done a wealth of research in the creation of this, but it felt too much like a cleverly written, albeit entertaining, never-ending essay on the social welfare and housing crisis in Brisbane. There is a lot of info dumping initially and it got exhausting.
The second half reeled me in more securely and I began to enjoy it, the info dumping seemed to peter out and the story took over. Make no mistake though, this story seesaws between sentimentality and brutality repeatedly. The ending, specifically the chase through the streets of Brisbane, once again left me exhausted. It was like reading the script of a Harley Quinn movie. Again, entertaining, but a bit much.
Ultimately though, this is certainly an entertaining read that upholds Dalton's reputation as writer who stitches his stories together with hope. I loved Boy Swallows Universe and Love Stories. Lola in the Mirror didn't quite stir my heart strings in the same way as those two did, but it's still a great read. The artwork prefacing each chapter deserves a special mention, it was excellent and did much to set the scene for each chapter and the story overall.
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