Eclectic Short Story Collection: Emotional Journey Through Time

In Back To Basics And Other Stories, Giles Ekins invites us into an eclectic short story collection that pulses with life across eras, voices, and moods. Within these pages, history brushes shoulders with modern irony; whimsy rubs against heartbreak, and satire murmurs beside earnest longing. The result is a tapestry of human flickers and echoes—a kind of emotional journey through time that lingers long after the last page is turned.

This anthology refuses to settle into a single tone or face. One moment, in “Back to Basics,” we are charmed by a prize‑winning whimsy; the next, in “Shadows of a Dream” or “The Lemonade Stall,” we are immersed in historical currents, feeling the weight of past lives. Then comes “As it was, as it is,” with its winking satire of 1980s student days, reminding us that even nostalgia carries tension. And toward the end, “And in the Shimmering Light of Dawn” delivers a love story so delicate it cuts to the bone. Through these shifts of register and time, we experience a spectrum of feeling: wonder, regret, tenderness, confusion. Each story is a constellating moment in a larger emotional arc.

Readers wander from one era to another, but the emotional core remains steady. We witness characters clinging to the ordinary—Paul Smith suits, lemonade stalls, student pranks—but in those everyday vessels, the weight of longing or change often rises. In “Portents,” unease hovers; in “Underneath the Clock Tower,” time becomes metaphor. Even in the comedic “Call Me Ruby” and “A Long, Long Finish,” humor cannot fully eclipse yearning. Ekins knows that laughter and sadness are often neighbors, breathing in the same room.

Yet this is not an anthology tethered only to sorrow. There are glints of grace, generosity, and moments of simple human connection. “A Kind and Generous Man,” “My Name Is Stevie,” and “A Perfect Job” resurrect small wonders—a gesture, a confession, a dream fulfilled. These stories remind us that amid upheaval, life may still offer soft footholds. The emotional journey through time, then, is not solely about loss: it is also about the tender persistence of hope, memory, and striving.

At the heart of Back To Basics And Other Stories lies a quiet insistence: that our inner lives are both fragile and expansive, bounded by time and yet capable of traversing across eras. Ekins does not tell us how to feel; he offers mirrors, windows, and shadows, and trusts we will find in their interplay our own reflections.