Backstories by Simon Van Der Velde

I would like to thank the author for an advance copy of this collection in exchange for affair and honest review

Publisher – Smoke and Mirrors Press

Published – 25/3

Price – £2.99 Kindle £7.99 paperback

NB – 30% of all profits will go to Stop Hate UK, The North East Autism Society and Friends of the Earth

CAN YOU FIND THE FAMOUS PERSON HIDDEN IN EVERY STORY?

Dreamers, singers, heroes and killers, they can dazzle with their beauty or their talent or their unmitigated evil, yet inside themselves, they are as frail and desperate as the rest of us. But can you see them? Can you unravel the truth?

One of the key parts of reading is placing ourselves into another character’s head and understanding their lives from views other than our own. Studies show reading helps with empathy and its yet another reason books are awesome. Reading can even use real life characters and that is the premise of Simon Van Der Velde making short tales based around turning points in people’s lives before they were famous.

This is a tricky one to review as part of the pleasure in reading these was working out before the end of the tale who the famous subject is so I will instead give you some broad impressions. Van Der Velde gives a varied selection of tales and puts himself in their shoes. There has clearly been some research and Van Der Velde has opted for a selection of people from a variety of professions from music, politics, film and even activism with largely a focus on those from the mid to late 20th century. Each character’s voice feels unique but as each story is only a few pages long you never really feel you’ve got into the depth of a character’s history and motivations – especially as the finale of each story is telling us effectively whose head we are travelling in. As a blogger in their forties the choices feel more geared to my age group but I did think at times some younger readers may be puzzled and choosing some notorious murderers felt partially as if horror was being trialled but for me didn’t fit the more optimistic tone of the selection which is characters rising past adversity.

Backstories is an entertaining set of lightly crafted puzzles to be solved and give you some insight into several key individuals of the last century so one I would suggest for those with a fondness for history and short stories.