Review: Extinguished Things
Molly Taylor is a masterful storyteller who creates a richly populated world from the relics left behind by a pair of close family friends.
Extinguished Things
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Published 18 Feb 2019
This forensic examination vividly recreates the intimate details that marked the lives of an elderly couple who grew up down the street from Molly Taylor.
She has a gift for capturing the things that make important moments stand out, like the creamy yellow tiles of a jaundiced bathroom, hosting a shattering intimacy, and the strange, meaty smell of cat food that sets off her childhood memories.
But this is not just the story of one couple, it is the story of a town divided by race riots and united in the love of a football club. Though she tells the story from the living room of Alton and Evie, Taylor makes the entire city breathe as she brings it to life.
She is a wonderful writer with memorable turn of phrase, and her delivery brings the characters of her street to life. She convincingly conveys the joy, sadness and the strange emptiness they leave behind when they’re gone as she intersperses these vignettes with her own story. Extinguished Things masterfully jumps between the lives of Alton and Evie and her own, using the first as a lens through which to view the home town of Liverpool and her upbringing.