Lead Review
- Book: The Bygones
- Location: Nottinghamshire
- Author: Jim Gibson
3.5*
In these short stories, the author gives voices to locals in Nottinghamshire, who perhaps would rarely get themselves heard. Each story ranges across genres, including several coming-of-age pieces. Indeed the author refers to his collected works as “Small Stories“.
The presentation, with quality binding, is 17x24cm, so it is an unusual size, comprising c 78 pages of text.
The author has chosen various themes and storylines, focussing on people who are getting by – just and sometimes on the edge of society. The text is easy to read with casual strands of dialogue and vernacular, and flowing consciousness and observations. The opening story features a young man who has met the devil but who IS the devil? Another woman is adding to her collection of garden gnomes and yet another is clearing up after an assault by the man in her life. Memories go back to childhood, the love of nature after observing a squirrel (eating a Kit Kat). “The Word” has an obscure premise. “Fag Ash” tells the story of an explosion in a local factory – the storyteller has been asked to share and goes off on a tangent to talk about the piano at Terry’s house and his Uncle Pete.
These assembled stories bring the reality of life in the former Nottinghamshire coalfields to the reader. Short, sharp and gritty, and at times depressing.
The cover image is striking but it did rather give me the cold creeps – sadly, it would not inspire me to pick it up. Inside the book there are a couple of further black and white photographs, dark and blurred, which are no doubt included to add a spooky and bygone atmosphere to the stories, but they looked as though they had been taken through the windscreen of a moving car. The question is then raised about judging/not judging a book by its cover, because there is some very decent storytelling within the pages of this book. I do wonder, ultimately, at whom this set of stories is aimed.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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