Pieces of Molly: An Ordinary Life (2012) by Judith Gurney, published by  Matador

Pieces of Molly, is a memoir, an autobiographical narrative of “an ordinary life”. It features the first ten years of childhood reconstructed from memories, musings, and mysteries, presented in a series of chronologically organised essays, each a “piece” in its own right while being intimately connected by interwoven themes to the whole.

The narrative is presented in story form with each chapter having a synoptic heading reminiscent of eighteenth century literature and an extract from a guide to tapestry maintenance. These two motifs link past events in Molly's life with the on-going work of reconstruction and conservation which is the task of all storytellers. They also refer the reader to the symbolic meaning of the unwritten narrative which works unseen, like the backing of the tapestry. The story, like the eponymous Molly, is damaged, is in pieces, and requires holding together.

This then, is a complex narrative which works simultaneously on several levels. It can be read simply as a drama set in the rural England of seventy years ago, or as a mystery, with Molly the recipient of a baleful inheritance and her parents the unwitting protagonists in a plot as twisted as a modern detective novel. At a deeper level, the memoir is an allegory: a journey from innocence, through sin, guilt, and understanding, towards a partial reconciliation. It is also a deeply reflective, developmental narrative, which will feel familiar to any who have spent time attempting to review a troubled past from the perspective of a differently organised present.

If you're free to, and you want to, you can go up or down between these worlds, the lift-shaft of many tensions and tenses, where past present and future characters in the old stories collide and complain, bluster and lie, jostling each other

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with a nip here and an elbow jab there like cunning old ladies at a jumble sale, as they push themselves forward with no attempt at orderliness, what a crew they are, the everlasting unburied de