In the State of Excitement is Scottish-Australian writer Paul Laverty’s third book, this time a collection of short-short stories and some slightly longer stories set in each of 52 Perth suburbs.
Building from the collection’s ironic title and ironic-iconic cover images, the stories canvas the experiences of a vast and motley collection of characters very skilfully linked to place. Laverty writes with great humour and affection for his characters, despite sticky situations and self-inflicted scenarios that generate terrific readings of the absurdities of ordinary life.
This is an ambitious project that in the hands of a lesser writer might descend into something far less than the sum of its parts. These are stories told with great wit and warmth, traversing a range of human experience as broad and as varied as the city itself.