Michaela Kolofsky

Hello, it's the Bookshelf and today one of the most anticipated new Australian novels of the year.

We're going to Darwin in 1942 to meet a young girl called Molly Hook in Trent Dalton's All Our Shimmering Skies.

Hello, I'm Cassie McCullough.

Looking forward to that.

But let's get straight to the book that everyone's been waiting for.

Well, it's not an overstatement to say that Trent Dalton's second novel, All Our Shimmering Skies, has been much anticipated.

The first one sold 500,000 copies in Australia alone.

An incredible debut, Boy Swallows Universe.

And it was read, I guess, Michaela, by people who don't often read Australian fiction, which is what made it so remarkable.

So absolutely no pressure on Trent Dalton following this up with this new book.

Let's get to the story.

It's a completely different location, but there are many similarities between the two.

At the beginning of this book, we meet young Molly Hook.

She's about seven years old.

She's a gravedigger's daughter and also a gravedigger herself.

It's Darwin in the late 1930s.

She's in the graveyard with her mother and they have a quite profound conversation and we soon realise it's the last conversation they will ever have, Michaela.

And she implores Molly to live her life with grace and so she can leave her own epitaph, not have one written for her.

So she says to Molly, I'm going to leave you now.

I'm going to go to the sky.