4.5★s
Minds Went Walking is a collection of twenty-one short works of fiction and non-fiction, inspired by the songs of Paul Kelly, from twenty-one Australian authors, singer/songwriters, and others with a special connection to him or his work, curated by Jock Serong, Mark Smith and Neil A. White. Sometimes the connection to the song is barely apparent or quite tenuous, but this in no way detracts from these works.

Tim Rogers muses on understanding (or at least believing he understood) the lyrics of When I First Met Your Ma, and sharing that revelation with the songwriter.
In The Fastest Ford in Western Australia, Jock Serong weaves into his tale of travelling coastal WA his recall of the misheard lyrics of To Her Door, something that will have most readers laughing out loud. They might suggest he needed his hearing checked, but let’s be glad he did not, for the story would be the poorer for it, and who of us can claim to never have been puzzled by lyrics that later reveal our own error?
In With Walt, Michelle Wright channels With Animals to give us a woman travelling to her in-laws for Christmas dinner but preferring company of a dying pig.

In I’ll Be Your Lover, Mirandi Riwoe‘s thirty-five-year-old protagonist imagines her younger lodger might become a lover.
In Five-Eight, Zoe Bradley’s inspiration from Down To My Soul sees a woman succumbing to the pull of attraction with the drummer in a pub band, her one-time lover.
In It Started With A Kiss, Neil A. White’s twist on the denouement of the song of those young lovers is particularly chilling.

In The Seed, Claire G. Coleman offers a monologue that might be an Artificial Intelligence protest action in a futuristic version of From Little Things Big Things Grow
In Meet Me In The Middle Of The Air, Lorin Clarke recalls a song first heard at a birthday-gift concert and various further encounters with Paul Kelly.
For Julia Lawrinson, Dumb Things strikes a chord with an eighteen-year-old doing her own dumb things (as most of us do).

In Count The Little Things, Laura Elvery’s take-away from Sleep Australia Sleep is an email in the twenty-first century about the possible reappearance of a certain extinct Tasmanian animal, exciting the staff of the Australian Natural History Museum, and a late nineteenth century botanical illustrator drawing that animal when she sees encounters it.
In Every Fucking City, Robbie Arnott starts by telling us how his interpretation of this song changed with his own travel experience, but ends in a lament for his late grandfather.
In Before Too Long. Jake Cashion’s story might be about a man visited mid-life by his older and younger selves.

In Soft Bite, Alice Bishop takes inspiration from Gathering Storm when tears and stitches cause Minna to tell Dean he has to deal with the beloved-as-a pup blue heeler that has now acted out of character.
In Look So Fine, Feel So Low, Kristen Krauth describes the innocuous start and eventual breakdown of a toxic relationship in this digital age.
In That Sweet Promenade, Bram Presser’s take on From St Kilda To Kings Cross results in the meeting of a wanderer with someone once very close.

In Special Treatment, Gina Williams shares her own experience of “special treatment”, and that of those she knows, or knows of, that inevitably comes to those identifying as indigenous.
In God Told Me To, Matt Neal gives an almost forensic dissection/analysis of this Paul Kelly song’s music and lyrics.
In Wake, Sam Carmody draws from Songs From The Sixteenth Floor an account of diagnosis, loss and grief laced with exquisite prose like: “They woke to a strong westerly, the surface of the sea pulled taut, like a nurse-made bed.”

In Don’t Stand So Close To The Window, Angela Savage’s protagonist, Maggie sights someone at the wrong window, bringing the recall of stolen moments with an illicit lover.
In Desdemona, Sarah Drummond gives us the love story of Desi and Otto, from the first flush to its rocky ending.
In An Archipelago Of Stars, Mark Smith takes lines from Deeper Water and give us young, broken-hearted Archie who, even after his father is missing for three hundred and eighty-four days, is not giving up hope just because everybody else has.

Each contribution in this collection is at least a four-star read; most are definitely worth five stars. Of the curators’ contributions, it can be said that Jock Serong’s is guaranteed to have the reader laughing out loud, Neil A. White’s will likely give the reader a chill, and Mark Smith’s cannot help putting a lump in the throat.

Familiarity with Paul Kelly’s lyrics certainly enhances the enjoyment of these short works, but is it by no means an absolute requisite. With such rich source material as Paul Kelly’s songs, and twenty-one talented contributors, it’s no surprise that this collection of very different pieces has something for everyone.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Fremantle Press