All Our Shimmering Skies

Starred review from May 24, 2021
Dalton (Boy Swallows Universe) delivers a spellbinding saga of survival and transformation in WWII Australia. Before seven-year-old Molly Hook’s mother dies, she makes Molly promise to make her heart as rock-hard as her surroundings—adding that Molly can always find her up in the sky, “where the best gifts come from.” In the first of many fabulist moments, Molly’s grandfather Tom Berry’s gold-prospecting pan appears as if fallen from the clouds; it’s inscribed with riddles that will guide her to an Aboriginal elder, Longcoat Bob, who the family believed had cursed them for Tom’s theft of gold from Bob’s ancestral lands. Molly excitedly takes it home, where her hard-drinking gold hunter turned gravedigger father, Horace, slugs her in the jaw and her uncle Aubrey throws away the pan, behavior Molly attributes to the curse. Five years after her mother’s death, a Japanese bombing raid kills Horace and destroys their house, and Molly flees with Aubrey’s girlfriend in search of Longcoat Bob. Along the way, a stranded Japanese fighter pilot becomes their protector, and the three continue on a quest marked by trials and wonders while being pursued by Aubrey. Dalton provides exquisite descriptions of deserts, waterfalls, mazes of stone monoliths, and Aboriginal cave paintings, and creates a courageous, unsentimental heroine in Molly. This is a wonder.

July 1, 2021

In a harsh and magical novel set in Darwin, Australia, at the start of World War II, Molly, a gravedigger's daughter, has inherited her mother's dreamy disposition. Her mother died when Molly was seven, leaving her to fend for herself in a 20th-century Dickensian environment, cared for by her brutal, heavily drinking father Horace, and often her equally drunken and brutal uncle Aubrey. The family is also reputed to have been cursed by Longcoat Bob, an Aboriginal shaman whose gold was possibly stolen by her prospector grandfather. Molly's only escapes are her imagination and the poetry books in her late mother's library. After the Japanese bomb Darwin, killing Horace, Molly sets off to find Longcoat Bob to ask him to remove the alleged curse. She's joined by Greta, a German actress and sometimes exotic dancer, and eventually by Yukio, a gentle-spirited Japanese pilot who crashes his plane rather than continue to kill. As they venture ever deeper into the outback, their journey takes on mythic proportions. VERDICT In this follow-up to Dalton's LJ best-booked debut, Boy Swallows Universe, goodness, hope, and a bit of magic are pitted against gritty realities. The result is unquestionably appealing, though somewhat diminished by a number of characters who seem like period movie clich�s.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2021
The last time Molly saw her mother alive, she told Molly to look to the sky. Molly cannot cry when they dig her mother's grave a few days later, and as time passes she becomes convinced her family curse is turning true, and her heart is turning to stone. The curse is outlined on her grandfather's epitaph, claiming that a greed for gold led sorcerer Longcoat Bob to turn her grandfather's true heart, and those of his kin, to stone. Now just shy of 13, Molly sees the stone-heartedness in her cruel uncle and her weak father, both drunkards who punish her severely. But she has a way out--a map, carved in verse on the back of a gold-panning dish--that will allow her to find Longcoat Bob and lift the curse. But this is northern Australia during WWII, and the buzzing of Japanese aircraft taking over the skies and dropping bombs quickly complicates her plans. She sets off with her uncle's lady friend Greta to follow the path to Longcoat Bob's gold. They are soon joined by a Japanese pilot named Yukio, who bails out of his Zero before crashing into a sandstone plateau. Achingly beautiful and poetic in its melancholy, All Our Shimmering Skies is a majestic and riveting tale of curses and the true meaning of treasure.

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August 12, 2020
Backdropped by the 1942 bombing of Darwin, Trent Dalton’s All Our Shimmering Skies is a macabre, dreamlike fable interrogating greed and intergenerational trauma. At the age of seven, gravedigger girl Molly Hook loses her mother and learns to talk to the sky. Her family is cursed, she’s told. So, at the age of 12, armed with a shovel, the works of Shakespeare and a blood-red stone dug from her mother’s grave, she sets off into the wilderness to change her destiny. In his follow-up to the bestselling Boy Swallows Universe Dalton uses short sentences, vivid poetic imagery and repeated text structures to paint an immersive picture of Molly’s world, one that blends violence with childlike wonder and, as Molly treks deeper into the wild, is filled with an optimism that contrasts with the grim reality of both the war and her upbringing. The unfolding story is engrossing, though some readers might find it a bit slow going at times. For the most part Dalton surrounds Molly with a thoughtful and interesting mix of people, however there is some questionable rendering of the Asian characters in particular. This is a book that mixes magic with reality, resulting in an ethereal family epic that is ultimately hopeful. Elizabeth Flux is a freelance writer and editor.