Never More Alive Published

My creative non-fiction story, Never More Alive, has been published in Stray Words Magazine. It’s a humorous look at what happens when your past life crashes into your present through an unexpected phone call.

What’s Stray Words Magazine?

Stray Words Magazine is a British memoir magazine. This is how they describe it:

At Stray Words, we believe that every word has value, and every story deserves to be told. That’s why we’ve created a quarterly literary magazine that gives writers of all backgrounds the freedom to showcase their memoir work.

What’s Never More Alive About?

The theme of issue three was ‘Crossroads: explore the pivotal moments in life – the decisions, turning points, and paths left unexplored – and reflect on how these choices have shaped who we are today’, which is exactly what Never More Alive does. The story revolves around a simple premise: the memories provoked when a former classmate invited me back to give a talk at our old school.

The logline is:

After the publication of his first novel, an introverted author is invited to speak at his old school by a notorious ex-classmate. He revisits the fateful decisions they made thirty years ago as he tries to decide if he has any wisdom to offer to today’s school-kids.

To avoid spoilers, it’s probably best if you read the story before reading the rest of this article. It’s available in issue 3 of Stray Words Magazine

Never More Alive: Analysis

Okay. Spoilers from here on.

Plot

The story seems to be a simple anecdote about a phone call, but it’s actually cleverer than that, if I do say so myself. The plot is a bit like a Russian doll, each memory revealing something progressively more vulnerable and personal about both me and Donna.

Donna starts off as a stereotype: a girl who’s notorious around the school. Then we learn about her romantic relationship with Andy, then about how she was sexually assaulted, and finally about how she got pregnant at seventeen.

Similarly, I start the story presenting myself as a successful author who thinks he’s too good for his old school, then it turns out I was so unpopular at school I hid in the library and so socially inept that I ran past pregnant Donna rather than talk to her. And eventually, the stories crossover and Donna proves to have an insight that helps me to come to terms with those long past events.

Style

The narrative technique I used in Never More Alive is a kind of stream of consciousness: one recollection triggers another, then another, each one getting deeper. It starts with the surface-level stuff like how I knew Donna at school and cascades into increasingly intimate details, creating a character study of how two very different people got through their lives and dealt with the very different cards life had dealt them.

Another style element is one I use a lot: repetition. The library appears three times: first as ‘the only good thing about Hazel Grove,’ then as a place I’d be happier speaking, suggesting that even now I regard it as a safe place, and finally as a symbol of both escape and growth. This repetition connects the past and the present.

The story also uses humour as a defence mechanism. Every time I get close to something painful or genuine, I make a joke and deflect the story, which is what people do all the time in real life. Eventually, of course, the defensive humour ends and Donna and I have an honest exchange about how we were ‘never more alive’ than we were at school.

I think the dialogue is a good portrayal of two people choosing their words carefully, trying and eventually failing to avoid deeper connection. I think this is the thing that makes the story work, the contrast between the present-day frame story and the memories themselves. The present-day conversation is awkward and cautious, full of gaps and ellipses, but the memories are much richer, and reveal the truths that the conversation skates around.

Themes

I guess the point of the story is to explore the way we process our pasts and deal with them. My initial reluctance to return to the school shows the depth of its effect on me, while the ending doesn’t give a trite resolution. There’s no dramatic reconciliation. Instead, there’s something that I think is more honest: a recognition that while we can’t change our past, we can choose how we perceive it.

Writing about the past it’s easy to wallow in either nostalgia or bitterness. I hope I avoided both with the ending of the story. It doesn’t end with a major triumph like me returning to my old school, now a big shot author. Instead, Donna and I get a low-key opportunity to come to terms with the past.

Never More Alive: Reality

Names Have Been Changed

Although Never More Alive is a true story, I changed the names of individuals, apart from my own and Sarah Harding’s, who’s a peripheral character.

Hazel Grove High School is an actual school and its Wikipedia page mentions both Sarah Harding and I as alumni, as you can see here: Hazel Grove High School. I was at the school from 1979 to 1986.

Did Those Things Really Happen?

Basically, yes. Although:

• It’s my recollection of events forty years ago, and my memory is as fallible and selective as anyone else’s.
• There’s some poetic licence in places to make the story flow.
• It’s a humorous piece, so you can’t take the jokier bits entirely literally.

But, yeah, it’s basically true, and I’m not just saying that to help you suspend disbelief.

But Those Things Were Terrible!

Yeah. Times have changed. School was kinda feral. Fighting was endemic, as was physical bullying. Sexual harassment ditto. The unpleasant incidents on the last day of school were something that happened. I in no way condone them. In fact, the more I think about them, the worse they seem. As I say in the story, I certainly hope things have changed since then.

For my part of the story, I was in an unusual position, in that I was academic and ‘weird’, so seemed to attract kids who thought they could bully me, but my parents taught me that if anyone tried to bully me, then I had to ‘stand up for myself’. And I wasn’t small or physically weak. This all ended up in a lot of confrontations, a fair number of fights and, yes, a lot of hiding in the library. My life got better in the sixth form, and a lot better at university.

Where Are The People You Went To School With Now?

I don’t know. As I say in the story, I’ve not been back to Hazel Grove since my parents moved away a few years later.

Of the people in the picture of my class, which must have been taken in 1984, only me and a couple of others went on to do A levels in the sixth form. The rest I never really heard of again. I probably saw a couple of them in pubs over the next couple of years, but nothing that sticks in my mind. One guy I bumped into on the street about five years later. We went for a coffee and he told me how he’d become a hairdresser.

It’s strange how people you spent such a pivotal time in your life with disappear like that, and of course, that’s part of the point of the story.

Never More Alive: Want to Read It?

Never More Alive is available in issue 3 of Stray Words Magazine

What do you think?

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