Publication Date: November 1, 2021
A blind man yearns to see the face of his wife of thirty 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.
Inspired by a personal moment of profound love and generosity, Trent Dalton, bestselling author and one of Australia’s finest journalists, spent two months in 2021 speaking to people from all walks of life, asking them one simple and direct question: ‘Can you please tell me a love story?’ The result is 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.
Author Trent Dalton spent two months walking the streets of Brisbane, asking random strangers to tell him love stories. Then, he spent two weeks at the edge of King George Square, where he continued his research while typing the stories on an Olivetti typewriter gifted to him.
The end result, compiled into a book aptly named Love Stories, has 43 individual vignettes that contain countless encounters and informal interviews. Written on the heels of the pandemic, Dalton’s efforts illustrate the many different forms love can take.
Whether it’s the story of Helen and Norm Clark, married for 40+ years, or the one about Graeme Ferguson, who is fully blind and has never seen the wife he has known for 30 years, the personal accounts are compelling.
The author’s observation that people seemed more willing to talk about love post-pandemic makes a lot of sense. With the death toll rising, what mattered most was life, not material things.
Love Stories delivers a poignant reminder of the power of love in all of its many forms. This timely set of stories is exactly what we all need in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Trent Dalton is an award-winning journalist at The Weekend Australian Magazine. His writing includes several short and feature-length film screenplays. He was nominated for a 2010 AFI Best Short Fiction screenplay award for his latest film, Glenn Owen Dodds, which also won the prestigious International Prix Canal award at the world’s largest short film festival, the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. Dalton’s debut feature film screenplay, In the Silence, is currently in production.
