Muristek
An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa review – deftly executed and cringingly funny
Young people try – and fail – to live gorgeously in the Melbourne writer’s debut collection, which is bleak, acute and stealthily tender
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastThe stories collected in Paul Dalla Rosa’s debut, An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, are similar enough that you sense a theme, different enough that each comes as a relief. They’re about young modern lives: precarious and disappointing houses, boyfriends, jobs; trying to make beautiful art, or a beautiful self, to do something or be someone that matters (at least to someone). And the lust and vanity and vulnerability of that.
Many of these ten pieces have appeared elsewhere in Australia and overseas, and marked the Melburnian as a writer to watch. In 2018, Dalla Rosa described his idea of a great short story: “It appears, everything else fades away, then it’s gone … An act of transubstantiation, matter simultaneously changed and unchanged.” To weigh someone’s work against their own criteria for success might be a friendly way to load the die – but it does describe what these stories achieve.
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning
Continue reading...