An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa

A story collection from a phenomenal new talent that perfectly captures life in the internet age.
 
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. Dalla Rosa is a masterful observer - and hilarious eviscerator - of our ugly, beautiful attempts at finding meaning in an ugly, beautiful world. just over half the stories in this extraordinary collection have gay protagonists.
 
Highly recommended. 
 
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'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.' -- Seán 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
 
'Voyeuristically addictive, funny, and deceptively simple.' Halle Butler, author of The New Me