Description

‘Curious and unflinching … deftly executed and cringingly funny’ Guardian
‘Truly excellent’ Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

Whether working in food service or in high-end retail, lit by a laptop in a sex chat or by the camera of an acclaimed film director, or sharing a flat in the city or a holiday rental in Mallorca, the protagonists of the ten stories comprising Paul Dalla Rosa’s debut collection navigate the spaces between aspiration and delusion, ambition and aimlessness, the curated profile and the unreliable body.

By turns unsparing and tender, Dalla Rosa explores our lives in late-stage Capitalism, where globalisation and its false promises of connectivity leave us further alienated and disenfranchised. Like the legendary Lucia Berlin and his contemporary Ottessa Moshfegh, Dalla Rosa is a masterful observer-and hilarious eviscerator-of our ugly, beautiful attempts at finding meaning in an ugly, beautiful world.

‘Voyeuristically addictive, funny, and deceptively simple’ Halle Butler, author of The New Me

Publisher Review

With caustic wit, Dalla Rosa performs a kind of surgery on his characters, splitting them wide open to reveal something exciting and vivid, ugly and depraved * Guardian * Truly excellent ... read it, both for Paul's sharp, dry wit and also the taut beauty of his lines -- Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize Pitch perfect, with undercurrents of sorrow and angst -- Kit de Waal, Judge of the Sunday Times 2019 Short Story Prize Panel and author of The Trick to Time Darkly funny ... Bitingly ironic and immensely original * Sunday Times * These are bold, acerbic stories that draw out the surreality of our disconnected, often brutal world. -- Sean Hewitt I love these voyeuristically addictive, funny, and deceptively simple stories. Paul Dalla Rosa has perfectly articulated the bizarreness of human isolation and human behaviour. -- Halle Butler A precise and perfect depiction of a particularly current brand of emptiness and aloneness ... hilarious, brutal, warm and tender -- Abigail Ulman, the author of Hot Little Hands Engrossing, gleefully unsettling, curious but mercifully never whimsical, this is an eminently readable collection -- Lauren John Joseph, author of At Certain Points We Touch The contemporary urgency of his stories is intoxicating.... This is such an exciting collection - writing this good is thrilling, exhilarating -- Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap Hilarious and heartbreaking ... It's deliciously deadpan, often absurd, and painfully alive. -- Alice Ash, author of Paradise Block Paul Dalla Rosa's writing is beautiful in its simplicity, awe-inspiring in its assessment of contemporary culture, and hilarious when you least expect it. Each story in An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life contains its own stunning world and its own cast of unforgettable characters playing out scenes that only Dalla Rosa could write. This book is a knockout. -- Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else Striking, singular -- Gurnaik Johal, author of We Move A blisteringly brilliant and deliciously unsettling short-story collection * Attitude * What is remarkable about this collection is that Dalla Rosa harnesses the unique strengths of the short story form to achieve a myriad portrait of this particular crossroads in contemporary history, especially as it impinges on young gay people. -- Bobuq Sayed * Astra * Collected in An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, the short stories of Melbourne writer Paul Dalla Rosa use minimalism to elevate the state of in-betweenness to an exercise of constraint. His stories eschew spectacle ... but their resonance is created by more subtle means, by the promises that these lonely and angst-ridden characters are learning about themselves, learning (through their failures) how to exist in a world with the odds stacked against them * Sydney Morning Herald *