(Note: this book was sent to me by the publisher for review.)

Her new book Used To Be certainly lived up to my high
expectations. The collection is separated into two halves. ‘What Was, What Is’ contains
stories that deal with the theme of memory, of the shifting connections between
the past and the present. The second section, ‘What May Be’, deals with what if
stories and hypotheticals, with dreams and turning points and possibilities.
Both sections have a wide variety of stories, ranging in perspective, theme and
even the time period in which they’re set. We have middle-aged women looking
back at the turning point of their life. We have sisters who have never
understood each other, nineteenth century men being haunted by the ghosts of
their deeds. We have black holes and near train crashes and ruined castles. These
stories are journeys into the past and into possible futures and strike a superb
balance between the thought-provoking and the poignant.
Overall I prefer the
stories in the second section, ‘What May Be’. This is partly because of the
greater interest the themes of the second section hold for me personally, and
also because what I felt were the weaker stories in the collection – ‘Looking
for the Castle’ and ‘The Relentless Pull of Gravity’ – were in the first
section. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy these stories, but I felt with
both that I was missing something, that there was some moment of clarification
or change that was lacking.
Regardless, Baines is
certainly a talented writer, and I find her narrative style fascinating and
refreshing. I especially love her use of various voices and narrative
perspectives. She uses the second person with a skill and effectiveness I don’t
think I even realised was possible. The second person always feels like a risk
to me – unnervingly direct, less familiar to us as readers than first or third –
and yet Baines pulls it off incredibly. The stories told in the second person –
‘Looking for the Castle’, ‘Clarrie and You’, ‘Possibility’ and ‘What Do You Do
If’ – have a strange and beautiful sense both of universality and of
uniqueness; they are about specific characters but they are also about you. You are literally pushed into the
shoes of these characters. It’s different, clever and wonderfully effective.
I won’t discuss each
individual story in depth, but there are a few in particular I’d like to
mention. I’ve previously reviewed ‘This Turbulent Stillness’ and ‘Tides or How Stories Do or Don’t Get Told’,
which remain two of my favourite stories in this collection. ‘This Turbulent
Stillness’ is a moving and interesting story, in a way a modern take on the
relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. ‘Tides’ is I think my favourite story overall.
It is a story about the lack of stories, a twisting tale of stories that could or
could not get told, of the stories that slip through the net or stories that
distract from other stories. It’s beautiful, and it’s self-reflective, both of
which please me.
Another that I really
loved, was ‘The Choice Chamber’. This story is about a woman pondering what would
have happened if, at some point in her past, she had gone a different path,
chosen a different man. It is one of those perfectly timed short stories, that
starts and finishes exactly where it ought to, that is somehow exactly the
right length and tone. It is an enigmatic, clever, brilliant story, that
clearly captures different sides of one character.
I was also impressed
by ‘Falling’. This is perhaps one of the strangest and most puzzling stories in
the collection – and yet I loved it. A woman falls, or maybe she dreams she
falls. Or, a woman falls, then falls again, and it is second fall, not the
first, that is the dream. From the first line, ‘Then one year she started
falling’ to the end, I was hooked and, if half bewildered, also enthralled.
Another favourite was
‘Possibility’. This story follows three characters – three different second
person ‘you’s in fact, in the wake of an accident on the train, a disruption
due to a fatality of the line. Baines moves you rapidly from character to character,
but the directness of the second person really makes you inhabit each one,
seeing each side of the story, seeing every character both through their own
eyes and the eyes of those around them. It is a really interesting examination
of the interactions of strangers, of how people deal with unexpected
situations. And, vitally, the ending is brilliant.
All in all, I loved
this collection, and I am excited to read even more by Elizabeth Baines in the
future. Her writing style is strong and refreshingly different, and I was
especially impressed by her use of the second person. The collection fits
together well and was a real pleasure to read. It contains all the ingredients
I love in a book: great writing, interesting use of narrative perspective,
hypothetical questions – and a few references to the Brontës.
Favourite
story: ‘Tides or How Stories Do or Don’t Get Told’ or ‘The
Choice Chamber’
Least
favourite story: Probably
‘Looking for the Castle’ and ‘The Relentless Pull of Gravity’; with both I sort
of felt that they stopped short of something, that there was some moment of clarification
or poignancy that was missing or that I’d missed.
Let’s
finish on a quote:
‘Maybe she was lying, maybe it’s just the tyranny of stories, the way they take
you over with their own internal logic and their pull towards drama, you say
one thing and the story turns it into something else.’
Click here to buy Used to Be through my Foyles affiliate link.
Click here to buy Used to Be through my Foyles affiliate link.
Next week: It’ll be a guest review by Christopher
King.
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