Permanent Moments: A Fictional Autobiography

When clearing out his mother’s fl at Stephen discovers a tin of old photographs under her bed. Each image evokes a memory of childhood and we get to meet the people who inhabit those memories – wayward friends and sensible friends, strict teachers and hopeless teachers, ugly girls and gorgeous girls, Aunts who are not Aunts and Uncles who are not Uncles and a grandfather who revels in the art of mischief.

In this funny and sometimes moving novella Stephen Mitchell wonders whether our memor...