Review: Poorly written
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 09 19, 2011
Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This "story" was a perpetual middle. The author starts with one character's point of view, switches to another, and finishes with an all-inclusive POV. The characters were stereotypical, with stilted dialog, and improbably qualities. The characters had no depth, no believable reasons for their behavior, and no insights to offer. There was no purpose to the "story", and it struck me this was more a reporting of a situation the author knew about than a creation of the author's imagination.Had the author taken the situation and used it as a basis for her story, it would have been much more readable. We are always told to "write what you know", but that isn't to say a person should just retell an event--or lack thereof. Spend some time delving into the characters' minds. Tell the story from only a child's point of view, or the mom's or the friend's. Be consistent. Show us what happened--don't just narrate. Tighten it up to include only one event, not all the events over the period of several years in a few pages.Relating events is what reporters do--and they do it more succinctly. This is just wordy dribble. Thank goodness I didn't spend any money on it.