Review: Nice Try, But "Postcards" Vignettes Can Be Confusing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2012
Postcards From the Dog House: Home Sweet Home (Happy Accidents)Let me start by saying I think David Boyne does have a future as a writer. Right now he's an average to good writer who knows how to inject humor when it is needed and can write with sense of pongniancy in his essay about Annie and her husband. His love of Annie is apparent and while he tries to keep his feelings from the mix remaining aloof, the walls come down until Annie is no more. That he is a humorist is obvious from his need for the toolbox and the Stanley hammer -- very important to a 21-year-old, moving from college to college. That toolbox was his "Holy Grail", perhaps the key to his idea of maturity and independence and the hammer a big part of it. "Home Sweet Home" is a middling work, or at least I think it is, as it is very good at times and then at others it, a box of cereal would seem more interesting, which is not the Boyne I've heard of and read about. It makes one wonder why every writer seems to feel that somewhere in their career there's a need for an anthology of short stories. To this reviewer, a writer should find his genre or genres and concentrate on them and leave the anthologies to those who are better at it. Boyne is too good a writer and this one, I'm sure, will sell. It's a different work for Boyne. Perhaps he should stay with his strengths. It makes more sense.