Advertisement
Books

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life review: Exploring loneliness when we’re more connected than ever

Paul Dalla Rosa has created a modern and close-to-home collection that may just earn him the title of Bard of the “terminally online”

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is out now (Serpent’s Tail)

The narrator of Comme, one of the early stories in Paul Dalla Rosa’s brilliant debut collection An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life, is the manager of a sparsely stocked high-fashion retail space in Melbourne. “We had no signage. […] We played no music. Clothes hung from metal scaffolding. In shifts, time dilated.” The store embodies everything that Twitter would describe as a “liminal space”.

Throughout the story we learn of the subtle, queer dissatisfaction that the main character has towards his life, both personal and professional. It is a feeling exuded by many of the characters through-out Dalla Rosa’s collection, a stark juxtaposition of melancholy in the metropolis.

Through these 10 stories, Dalla Rosa meditates on that hyper-contemporary irony of the loneliness many can feel despite the fact we are more connected than ever. How many of us revel in our alleged, exciting and vivid inner lives? Mixed with the delusions of individualism goaded by social media, we meet a cast of characters as memorable as they are deeply tragic. 

This is truly a one-story-at-a-time collection, an approach best taken just in case you ever find yourself relating somewhat too closely to these sad people. In this book, Dalla Rosa has created a modern and close-to-home collection that may just earn him the title of Bard of the “terminally online”.

Barry Pierce is a journalist and cultural commentator

You can buy An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Advertisement
Advertisement

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine. If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play.

Advertisement

Learn more about our impact

When most people think about the Big Issue, they think of vendors selling the Big Issue magazines on the streets – and we are immensely proud of this. In 2022 alone, we worked with 10% more vendors and these vendors earned £3.76 million in collective income. There is much more to the work we do at the Big Issue Group, our mission is to create innovative solutions through enterprise to unlock opportunity for the 14million people in the UK living in poverty.

Recommended for you

Read All
Goodbye Eastern Europe: Finding the remains of a lost world
History

Goodbye Eastern Europe: Finding the remains of a lost world

Top 5 books about queer teenage romance, chosen by Helen Palmer
LGBT+

Top 5 books about queer teenage romance, chosen by Helen Palmer

Quiet Fires by Andriniki Mattis review: Realities of living as a transgender Black person in America
Poetry

Quiet Fires by Andriniki Mattis review: Realities of living as a transgender Black person in America

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud review: Finding a sense of self in landscapes
nature

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud review: Finding a sense of self in landscapes

Most Popular

Read All
Here's when people will get the next cost of living payment in 2023
1.

Here's when people will get the next cost of living payment in 2023

Strike dates 2023: From trains to airports to tube lines, here are the dates to know
2.

Strike dates 2023: From trains to airports to tube lines, here are the dates to know

Suranne Jones opens up about her 'relentless and terrifying' experiences of bullying
3.

Suranne Jones opens up about her 'relentless and terrifying' experiences of bullying

Arctic Monkeys team up with Big Issue to produce unique tour programme
4.

Arctic Monkeys team up with Big Issue to produce unique tour programme