To an Australian, this may well read as distinctly "aussie" matter, yet, as Malouf seems to understand something deeper about the people and their emotions, it is a .
assembly which reaches out to people as diverse as Jack and Amy.
Dream Stuff is a book about people who are haunted. The ghosts in its stories are the ghosts of dreams, representing subconscious, underground worlds of imagination, creativity, childhood and loss. In the case of Closer and At Shindler's, theses stories talk about the absence of an adult male. Nine year old Amy's Uncle, Charles has been exiled from their strict Pentecostal family, where as Jack's father, a soldier at war, has been reported "missing in action". These stories are able to discuss and contrast the idea of an absent male role model. The characters are troubled by a sense of loss for things that are not entirely gone. Dreams offer a chance to re-enter a present world of memory and imagination that has been driven underground. Malouf is a master at exploring the weird side of this dream world, one filled with the ghosts of lost loves and random violence brought about by false memories.
All of the stories in Dream Stuff seam somehow related, even though they are glimpses of different families through different family members' eyes. The individual stories in this book seem to move seamlessly from one to another, spanning decades and vast differences. Although this is a collection of short stories, it reads almost like a novel as one memory dreamily moves into another.
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Distinctive aspects of Malouf's writing .
The title Dream Stuff is perfect for a book by David Malouf. Malouf's style is best described as an exploitation of dreaming. The structure, tone and content of all the Malouf stories that I personally have read, their characteristics, assets and even their faults, can all be attributed nostalgia. His stories walk the line of myth and reality, and tend to be deficient in the classic beginning, middle, and end structure.
