By Phil Jarratt
Best-selling author Trent Dalton spent two months of this year sitting at a busy street corner in Brisbane with only a table, a chair and an ancient Olivetti typewriter for props, asking people to tell him their love stories. Which they did, enough to fill a book, which is apparently very good.
I had several interesting questions I wanted to ask him about this process, but Trent is obviously better at getting people to talk than I am, because over the past two weeks I couldn’t get him on the phone for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes is all I asked! That’s roughly how long it takes me to do my morning ablutions. Perhaps we could have timed a bathroom to bathroom FaceTime so that no schedules were interrupted, but it wasn’t to be. Perhaps I should have set up a table with a typewriter outside his Brisbane office. Yeah, nah.
I don’t blame Trent for this. It’s what happens when you have back-to-back monster hits, stage and screen adaptations etc, and you’re not bad looking. The star system kicks in. People have to go through people, and his people weren’t talking to my people, ie me.
Never mind, I’m assured he’s a good bloke, as well as a great writer, and you can talk to him in person at Annie’s Books On Peregian, buy the new book, maybe even tell him a quick love story in case there’s a sequel. And Love Stories (HarperCollins) does sound absorbing.
From the publisher’s blurb:
“A blind man yearns to see the face of his wife of 30 years. A divorced mother has a secret love affair with a priest. A geologist discovers a three-minute video recorded by his wife before she died. A tree lopper’s heart falls in a forest. A working mum contemplates taking photographs of her late husband down from her fridge. A girl writes a last letter to the man she loves most, then sets it on fire. A palliative care nurse helps a dying woman converse with the angel at the end of her bed. A renowned 100-year-old scientist ponders the one great earthly puzzle he was never able to solve: What is love?
“Endless stories. Human stories. Love stories … an immensely warm, poignant, funny and moving book about love in all its guises, including observations, reflections and stories of people falling into love, falling out of love, and never letting go of the loved ones in their hearts. A heartfelt, deep, wise and tingly tribute to the greatest thing we will never understand and the only thing we will ever really need: love.”
Trent Dalton will be at Annie’s Books On Peregian from noon, Friday 12 November.
