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In Malouf’s DreamStuff, the message that encapsulates all the stories in his collection, that everything is recoverable, emphasises how multifaceted loss can be. Whether it is a human life or a mere wallet, Malouf asserts that our emotional connection with a lost object ensures the survival of the person or thing in our memories. Though it is this emotional connection that allows us to see Malouf’s character’s struggle to fathom their past and their present. While Sally in ‘Sally’s story’ is trying to recover her lost intimacy and wholeness through discovering Brad, Audley in ‘Great day’ comes to term with the fire that has burnt down the family museum. In Malouf’s exploration of his characters he stresses the continuity of all things as interpreted in Clem’s summation of his speech, and that only through the sense of loss can people move forward with their lives. In ‘Sally’s Story’, Sally, a nineteen year old, out-of-work actor moves from her hometown in the country to Sydney’s King’s Cross to work as what the people at the time had call them, the ‘Vietnam Widows’, for the American soldiers on leave from fighting.
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