Review: Don't Go Around This Story - You'll Want to Climb It!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 20, 2014
I had a more mixed experience with this one than I did with the first of Todd Keisling's 'Ugly Little Things,' "Radio Free Nowhere." I thought this was a great story with a lot of great elements, but it felt like a cake with all the right ingredients, but the proportions of each just slightly off - it also felt like it needed just a little more time to bake.Karen is a tragic main character who has dealt with several major setbacks in her life. A miscarriage, a suicide attempt, and the death of her father, all in rapid succession. As a result of this, she is seeing a therapist. To my taste, she came off as more crazy than depressed in these scenes with the therapist, which caused me not to sympathize with her as much as with other characters during later developments. I feel like reeling in her behavior during these therapy scenes to highlight the anguish she was going through rather than how it had made her loopy would have helped balance the emotions of the story somewhat.But, oh: what an emotional story it was. I don't mean to sound like I didn't enjoy this story because it was thrilling and moving at the same time. When Karen finally does meet her titualar mountain, she has the choice to either go around, or climb. Her journey is quite intense and gripping.I like the fact that the voice of her father is always with her. It's a nice touch. The father speaks in a lot of dropped endin's at first which are themselves dropped a little later on - I'm sure this was a stylized choice but doing it even more sparsely or perhaps revealing this aspect of his speech via description rather than transcription would have suited my taste better.But that's just me, if'n you'll take my meanin', and I'm just a man livin' in the world. My opinion don't count fer naught but a heapin' helpin' of halfmonth-old hamburger.Todd is a very gifted author and this was a great new entry in his series of shorts. I eagerly await the next, coming March 3rd.