Product Description

There are moments when you really can stop time. Make a decision to go one way, and not the other. There's just a sense, a prickle on the skin, that tells you you're at the crossroads. But it's only when you're too far along to change direction that you realise you ever had a choice. She didn't mean to tell the story, or have it end that way. She just got a little carried away. It has been several years since she confided in a teacher, but Molly Drayton is still feeling the aftershocks. When a chance meeting with a stranger leads to an offer of a room in exchange for telling her stories, she jumps at the chance. Slowly she builds a new, eccentric family around herself: Tim, her secretive boyfriend, who just might be a spy; Miranda, the lovelorn hairstylist; Liz, the lusty librarian; Mr. Roberts, landlord and listener; and his French wife, Mrs. Roberts. Much to Molly's surprise, she finds the stories she tells now are her key to creating a completely different life. Suddenly, her future is full of endless possibilities. The trouble is, Molly's not the only one telling tales. And the truth is always stranger than fiction. Sarah Salway's witty, finely-tuned and poignant story of many stories is a uniquely entrancing chronicle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #411794 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
'I galloped through this - couldn't stop once I'd started Molly has such a strong and original voice, the writing's so spare and yet the message so complex spiky, sparky, pithy and deep' Kate Long 'An ambush of a novel: characters who engage and then promptly pull the rug out from under your feet, plus enough wit and insight for two novels' Michelle Lovric 'Sarah does something quite rare, I think, which is to write engagingly (even grippingly) about the emotions, but in a way which is formally experimental, often quite daring however dark she becomes the material is always handled with such a light touch, and is never predictable, always inventive' Andrew Cowan

About the Author
Sarah Salway is a prize-winning short-story writer, poet and the author of Something Beginning With. She lives in Kent with her husband and two children.

Customer Reviews

storytime
The cover is a worry. It looks like one of those gruesome real-life abuse tales called 'A Stolen Childhood', or 'Please Daddy, Don't' , something provocative like that. And at first it seems that this might be a fictional equivalent. Molly is a young runaway who has left home after creating a scandal at home. One afternoon she finds herself telling a teacher at school about her father, but the story runs away with her and after embellishing the truth she is surprised to see herself taken seriously and the huge consequences it has for her family. So this is not going to be a standard narrative. Molly is telling the tale of her own life and she is not a reliable narrator.

Molly is offered a job and a room by Mr Roberts, the owner of a stationary shop. There is one condition; that whilst she is at the top of the ladder arranging supplies on the top shelf she tell him stories about herself (whilst he peeps up her skirt). She becomes friends with Miranda who works in the salon. As Miranda primps and preens her they flatter one another with compliments about their film-star looks, 'Oh you!' they coo to each other. The local librarian Liz provides Molly with recommendations, starting with romance fantasies and eventually erotica. And then there is Tim, Molly's boyfriend, who seems to be someone very important, possibly even a spy. But as I said this is a novel about the tales we tell ourselves:

People can come from (and go to) nowhere. The homeless Molly Mr Roberts took home with him...was a monster he created himself with every question he asked...And that Molly was now a shared production. Miranda looked after my exterior appearance while, over in the library, Liz and her books were taking care of the inside thoughts. Even I had a part to play, reshaping my memories with every story I told Mr Roberts up that ladder...it was only when I was in the park with Tim that I had to think about being the real Molly.

But even from Tim she hides the past. The question of what really happened at home and the figure of Molly's father have a stalking presence in this novel which unsettles as the plot moves along. Molly is surrounded by people as damaged as her and the character of Tim is particularly unnerving with his tales of being able to 'hear' conversations through walls, his talk of training and missions. It is hardly surprising that Molly should have such a fractured ensemble around her but it is this I think which means the novel just fails to satisfy. There is very little foundation for this collection of tales to stand on. Salway is a prizewinning short story writer and clearly a talented writer. The fragile mental state of Molly is brilliantly evoked by the deluded conviction with which she speaks and the confusion she feels at the gaps in her memory. Where the novel works is as a story about storytelling, the ability we all have to create whatever narrative we need for different people and, in Molly's case, to survive. Like a modern day Scheherazade.

Serendipitous
What a quirky, different story this is. Sarah Salway's story is so different from other more down-to-earth books that it feels like you've been picked up and whirled around dizzyingly at a height. It is a breath of fresh air amongst plodding stories that tell essentially the same story. With weird characters - who somehow seem familiar - and a serendipitous storyline, you never know what will happen next, but you want it to turn out well for them all none-the-less.

I haven't finished it yet, but wanted to put down what I thought as soon as possible. Now back to the book.