What Endures by Pauline Holdstock

Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann

Whether it’s an over-excited dog, a man heading for parts unknown, or a woman looking at herself in the mirror, Pauline Holdstock holds your attention.

Many of her stories start out almost mundanely: in “Dear Geoffrey,” a long-lost friend from England writes to say he is coming to visit; in “Perfect Beauty,” a woman admires herself in the mirror, proud of herself for looking young; in “Maternity Suit,” a woman starting a new job is admired for being well-dressed. Others start with a jolt: in “Hanged Man,” two boys find a dead man hanging from a tree deep in the woods; in “Vita has Brain Surgery,” a woman frets over her imminent trip to the operating room; in “Spot,” a pair of boozing old men discuss bluntly what to do about their old, sick dog.

Others beg questions at the outset. In the title story, “What Endures,” a woman watches her daughter getting dressed in a room across the hall in their home, but the first line is immediately unsettling: “She knew as soon as she saw me.” She knew what? The answer comes slowly. In “Perfect Obedience,” the first line is “It wasn’t a bad dog.” Well was it or not?

Holdstock takes the reader deep into people’s minds as they come to terms with what is happening to them. She gets into people’s heads in different ways, though, intertwining observation and self-reflection. The characters are young and old, male and female, married, single, dating, or, in one instance, firmly celibate. As such, they naturally have uniquely personal ways of dealing with what life throws at them. Holdstock’s great skill is bringing these struggles across to the reader.

In a number of the stories Holdstock doesn’t use quotation marks, which has the effect of mingling speech and thought, illustrating the often-conflicted emotions behind what is being said.

Several of the stories deal with a person’s thinking about life and the passage of time, where that person is heading with his or her life. There is a special intimacy to each one. In “Danny, Is That You?” a mother ponders her teenage son’s coldness when a bird dies after flying down their home’s chimney. In “Perfect Obedience,” a woman’s love for her dog creates tension in her relationship with her partner.

Holdstock’s quest for the churning of human emotion takes her far afield physically as well. In “The Salve,” the postmistress in a small town in Poland is concerned about the behaviour of an old woman, Maja, whom everyone calls Old Miseryguts. The old woman is tight-lipped and rigid in both her routines and attitude toward others. But the postmistress persists and slowly is able to see what is going on beneath the woman’s off-putting unfriendly veneer. In “The Five-Barred Gate,” The only two remaining nuns in a Yorkshire convent struggle to not be evicted by the clerical bureaucracy. In “Release,” a man leaves home with no firm destination, except for the far north.

While Holdstock’s subject matter is varied, what she does extremely well is portray the people’s thought processes and emotions as they attempt to deal with the challenges and confusion they are experiencing, either these are within them or around them. Well worth the ride!

What Endures is published by Biblioasis.