Open Strings

Open Strings — Gordon Simms
ISBN: 9781788649735
£10.99

Following Roy’s boyhood in post-war rural Bedfordshire Open Strings immerses us in the countryside with its changing seasons and characters who accompany Roy as he makes the transition from childhood to adolescence. Often naïve, Roy struggles to understand much of the behaviour he witnesses, yet makes discoveries about himself and the human condition.

Moving from ‘Flood’ with its echoes of Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles and merging of memory, imagination and dream to the onset of school, that results in a vow of silence, and through the friendships, rivalries, hero-worship, first loves and moments of pushing the boundaries of behaviour that come with these early life stages, we arrive at ‘GDAE’ in which violence between strangers leaves Roy fleeing the scene as he has fled from other dilemmas.

A poignant and convincing novella, Open Strings examines the way we make sense of the world with its moments of euphoria, its bewildering protocols, the strange behaviour of others and the small acts of betrayal that mark us. Deepl humane, engaging and authentic, Open Strings is a finely-observed story and a compelling read.

Praise for Open Strings

Open Strings captures so well the rough edges, sharp corners, loose ends, terrors and daily miracles of childhood; its rivalries and moments of unexpected tenderness. A compelling, first-rate story that invites the reader to become a participant and a collaborator; thereby drawing the reader into a debate on the nature and power of story, of memory and on the nature of “reality” itself.

— Jackie Fellague, poet and environmentalist

I felt I was stepping into a bygone age. Beautiful writing, evocative yet with a poetic economy of style. The quirky characters and the landscape are deliciously encapsulated. So much to dwell on: a wonderful novella.

— Emma Curtis, novelist

A vivid picture of a bygone era, brilliantly brought to life through detailed observation. The reader is effortlessly and intimately involved in the narrative.

— Bernard Lord, poet

At a time when children at play have become ‘warnings’ along service roads, a time of growing isolation from the natural world and eco-anxiety amongst the young, it is necessary and urgent for them to put their screens away and discover how their elders played, learned and dreamed. Open Strings is an irresistible invitation to do just that: read, imagine, and read again.

— Isabelle Llasera, short-story writer

Gordon Simms captures the spirit of a rural, post-war childhood in this enchanting story. Through his evocative descriptions and masterful dialogue we see how one boy’s friendships and rivalries prepare him for the wider world.

— Harriet Springbett, author

It’s rare indeed to find prose where every few sentences delivers up a vivid metaphor or descriptive turn that’s subtly connective to the reader. These vital vignettes of a post-War Bedfordshire childhood are delivered to us through rich recurrences and strange isolations of character. Their interwoven tones and fractured guises offer a near-Cubist set of perspectives that avoid any centralising or forceful moral, opting instead for a gentle observational illumination that allows the chapters’ slant meanings to float insistently into memory.

— Mario Petrucci, poet

Open Strings is an engaging exploration of adolescence. At its heart is a sensitive discovery of selfhood within a shifting, uncertain postwar semi rural society fraught with petty enmities and trivial rivalries, and the joys and temptations of adolescent desire. The writing with its layers of freely-associative events has a dreamlike quality which verges at times on the almost nightmarish as Roy, its protagonist, tries to come to terms with life’s contradictions and betrayals in that liminal time between childhood and adolescence, a situation both captured in and emphasised by the occasional disconcerting shifts in the narration from the objective “he” to the subjective “I”. The visually-exact imagery coupled with lucid expression brings the central characters and their various exploits vividly to life. Gordon Simms has combined his considerable expertise as a teacher of drama and his success as a published poet to present the range of characters (among them Roy, Derek, Mick, Rose and Daphne) as believable people, so rounded and exact in their portrayal that the reader can accept them totally, foibles and all. His skilful use of dialogue captures exactly the nuanced verbal play, word-games, innuendos, insincerities and teasing of adolescent youngsters.

Author biography

Gordon Simms trained as an English and Drama teacher, and lectured at Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama before becoming a Drama Advisor and Head of Performing Arts. He is the author of several plays, including the prize-winning Stop Press. His ten-minute play Zero Contract was performed in 2017 in France where he has organised three bilingual literary festivals. He ran Segora International writing competitions for fifteen years, celebrating winning entries with readings, book launches and workshops. He has judged poetry, playwriting and short story competitions. A prolific poet, he has been successful in over ninety competitions and widely anthologized. His collection Uphill to the Sea won the Biscuit Prize in 2011. His short fiction has been published in The Real Jazz Baby and shortlisted for Fish. He has broadcast with the BBC and read at various venues in England, Scotland, Ireland and France.

This is what readers are saying about Open Strings:

A miracle of the senses, a melding of early memory with interplay of smells, sights, sounds and voices and Roy’s reactions: his hurt, his pleasure, his fear (of water, of bullies, of others’ demands and expectations). I was dazzled and moved at the same time. When Roy and Daphne are hiding under the tarpaulin covering the binding machine the heat and the mounting tension between the two of them is spellbinding. A brilliant piece of imaginative memoir.

Dr Phoebe Lambert, London, UK

I found it a gentle and relaxing read, but then with unsettling, darker moments emerging like storm clouds on a summer day. I thought the dialogue was great and really set the scene and characterisation and there was some great foreshadowing. I particularly loved the opening Flood on memory and the magic of books, it felt like a love letter to literature. 

Richard Hooton, Short Story Writer & Novelist, Ashton-Under-Lyne UK

What excited me was the freedom of childhood, recreated without gloss or mawkishness. There is no shortage of betrayals, rivalries and insults. The English countryside is a real character through the seasons and the years: the heat of summer, the wait for rain, the fields crossed, the mud, the snow; a nature above all conducive to summer games, and places to hide.

Nicole Grimbert, Teacher, Savonnieres France.

Thank you for writing a beautiful, thoughtful, lyrical book about a childhood probably very different from my own and yet with resonances which are undoubtedly universal to the experience of growing up.

Seth Freeman, Playwright, California, USA

Finished reading your book last night, I could hardly put it down: absolutely brilliant.

Linda Brazier, Teacher, Scarborough, UK

‘Flood’ is a truly marvellous and unique opening, both mystifying and involving at the same time.

Derek Sellen, Poet, Cambridge, UK

Its cover has the most luscious texture of any book that I have ever read. It is a pleasure to hold it and feel it, as well as to read it.

Dr Jackie Fellague, California, USA