Is Boy Swallows Universe on Netflix based on a true story?

Eli is determined to make the most out of his life, despite the odds being stacked against him: his mother (played by Phoebe Tonkin) is a recovering drug addict, his step-father (played by Travis Fimmel) a drug dealer, his mentor Slim (Bryan Brown), a national record-holder for successful prison escapes, and his older brother, Gus (Lee Tiger Halley), a clairvoyant with selective mutism.

So, is Dalton's book, and by correlation the TV show, inspired by a true story? Read on for everything you need to know.

Is Boy Swallows Universe based on a true story?

It might seem like an unlikely true story, but Boy Swallows Universe is indeed inspired by real-life events.

The book is semi-autobiographical, based on Trent’s own childhood in Queensland with a troubled mother and a stepfather who was a heroin dealer, and is a “50/50” blend of fact and fiction.

Much like Eli in the series, Dalton was also babysat and mentored by a convicted murderer.

On publisher HarperCollins’s website, Dalton, who is also a journalist, explains how the book is him "taking all my own secrets this time and turning them as respectfully as possible into a novel".

He writes: "The key characters all draw on the people I love most in the world. The most beautiful and complex people I’ve ever known, and I never even had to walk out the door of my house to find them.

"I just wanted to give the world a story. To turn all these crazy and sad and tragic and beautiful things I’ve seen into a crazy, sad, tragic and beautiful story."

He continues: “The research was really remembrance. Remembering all those years when the world around my small family crumbled. When people we loved were being taken away.

"When things we thought true were being turned false. Heads were being slammed into fibro walls. Dangerous people were knocking on doors at daytime. And when that world of ours crumbled – the world of prisons and small-time suburban crime – and my brothers and I went to live with my father who I never knew, that world we knew was replaced with a new world of a Brisbane Housing Commission cluster swirling with a hundred social issues – alcoholism, unemployment, domestic violence, generational social curses – all of which I would later write about as a journalist."

Speaking about how the book reflects his own mother's life story, he adds: "The book doesn’t say a tenth of what’s she’s been through and, in turn, my admiration for her, for coming out the other side of those things."

Is Slim Halliday a real person in Boy Swallows Universe?

Yes, Arthur “Slim” Halliday is one of the few characters who is actually a real person in both the book and the TV series.

He was best known as the Houdini of Boggo Road thanks to his six attempts to escape prison, two of which were successful. He was also a convicted murderer.

He died at the age of 77 on 29th June in 1987.

Speaking to the Townsville Bulletin, Dalton said of Halliday: “He’d let me turn the wheel and honk the horn. I loved the guy. He was the funniest, kindest old bloke."

Boy Swallows Universe is available to stream on Netflix. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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