'Voyeuristically addictive, funny, and deceptively simple' Halle Butler, author of The New Me
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Hilarious and heartbreaking ... It's deliciously deadpan, often absurd, and painfully alive." - Alice Ash
"Voyeuristically addictive, funny, and deceptively simple." - Halle Butler
"Engrossing, gleefully unsettling, curious but mercifully never whimsical, this is an eminently readable collection." - Lauren John Joseph
"The contemporary urgency of his stories is intoxicating.... This is such an exciting collection - writing this good is thrilling, exhilarating." - Christos Tsiolkas
"A precise and perfect depiction of a particularly current brand of emptiness and aloneness ... hilarious, brutal, warm and tender." - Abigail Ulman
"Pitch perfect, with undercurrents of sorrow and angst." - Kit de Waal
"Voyeuristically addictive, funny, and deceptively simple." - Halle Butler
"Engrossing, gleefully unsettling, curious but mercifully never whimsical, this is an eminently readable collection." - Lauren John Joseph
"The contemporary urgency of his stories is intoxicating.... This is such an exciting collection - writing this good is thrilling, exhilarating." - Christos Tsiolkas
"A precise and perfect depiction of a particularly current brand of emptiness and aloneness ... hilarious, brutal, warm and tender." - Abigail Ulman
"Pitch perfect, with undercurrents of sorrow and angst." - Kit de Waal
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Used availability for Paul Dalla Rosa's An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life