Changing Moods in Back To Basics And Other Stories

Giles Ekins’s Back To Basics And Other Stories brings together twenty pieces with different periods, subjects, and moods. For readers seeking an eclectic short story collection, its range is the useful starting point: historical tales share space with comedy, satire, and a love story.

Comedy alongside historical subjects

The whimsical title story shares the collection with the comic emphasis of Call me Ruby and A Long, Long, Finish. Shadows of a Dream, The Lemonade Stall, and Portents bring historical settings into the selection. Moving between them changes the tone and period while preserving the natural pause offered by each separate story.

Moving between them allows a reader to consider how a collection creates variety through subject as well as tone. The historical pieces and comic entries need not be read as steps toward one shared conclusion.

Satire and an emotional shift

As it was, as it is turns toward student life in the 1980s through satire. In the Shimmering Light of Dawn adds a love story, giving the collection another emotional register.

Twenty stories give the book room for different kinds of narrative. A reader can move from a comic piece to a historical one, or return later to a different mood. The assortment makes choosing the next story part of the experience, with each beginning offering another situation and another tone to discover.