Dim's Write Stuff

I’m known to spend my brief lunch breaks pouring over my latest read, gingerly page turning with one hand. Shoving food down with the other. There are usually accidents thus there is always a sheet of paper towelling or a servette present, as well. Let me tell you; if Love Stories by Trent Dalton is your current lunch date, you’ll need a few extra rolls of paper towelling. Not because the stories within ignite a voracious appetite but because they unbottle a sea of emotions that by the very last pages even the most robust 3 ply paper towel could not possibily absorb. Love Stories is not a wanton sob fest however. It’s more of a two-armed hug. It’s warm and intimate. Compassionate and global. It cleaves your heart open then carefully welds it back together, better than it was before even if you’re a bit like me; someone who has never succumbed to the pull of Valentine’s Day, who regards romance as improbable as a lottery win. Someone who has craved love since she could toddle after...

Regrettably, Gary Paulsen was a bit of an unknown to me until discovering this transcending story about his childhood. A multi-award winning author of young adult fiction, Paulsen reveals how his ability to smith words developed as a consequence of his remarkable upbringing, or more accurately, lack thereof. Paulsen was, not literally an orphan, but he was a lost child. Gone to the Woods begins with one such journey adrift an ocean of salacious events thanks to his mother and her penchant for supplementing her hourly wage at local Chicago clubs. At just five years of age, Paulsen is dumped upon a train bound for a relatives’ farm in north Minnesota not far from the Canadian border. It proves to be his temporary salvation and a place he acquires the art of patience, a deep respect for nature and an appreciation of what genuine kindness tastes like. Edy’s motherly compassion and Sig’s reticent guidance nurture the abandoned boy until a sense of who he is begins to emerge. It’s bone...

Saroo Brierley’s tale is one of heartbreak and tenacity. It’s the kind of bad dream that has you waking in a cold sweat; you know the one, where dread and abject terror fill every cell of your body because something so unconscionably bad happens and you are helpless to reverse it. Saroo Brierley experienced such a dream, which for a boy of just five years of age is harrowing enough, except Saroo’s nightmare was real. Separated from his older brother one fateful night whilst roaming the train platforms near his small hometown village, Saroo’s life takes an irreversible detour. From simply searching for opportunities to improve their improvised existence in India’s regional mid-west, Saroo’s young logic transports him half-way across the country to Calcutta (Kolkata); a veritable galaxy away from everything and everyone he’s ever known. Incredibly, he survives alone on the streets for weeks until he finds refuge in an orphanage. Within a month fate steps in again and Saroo is adopted...

The thing that screams most impressively in this tale about the real Turia Pitt , is her raw honesty and dogged determination, a stubbornness to not just never give in but to always push further. True grit is often bandied about as a commodity easily sourced from the self-help section of our bookshops, but this account of someone who has literally been to hell and back, presents life in all its glory, normality and of course horror with unashamed frankness. Having survived the awful fire event in 2011 whilst competing in an outback marathon, Pitt allows the reader to relive her fear, pain and frustrations, before, immediately after being engulfed by flames and then beyond, down the long arduous road of recovery. Along the way she bears more and more layers of herself, some relating to the 'old Turia', others glimpses of the new improved Turia. Improved because as she asserts, if she had not experienced such trauma, her life and future convictions may not have evolved as...