Response to "Where to Start?"

I liked "Where to Start?" for the most part. It was not too long winded and it gave the reader an environment and character that seemed real to the reader. It was a story about a young man named Darroll who is roughly sixteen or so. He reveals the way his life has played out so far in his schooling (without going into too much unnecessary detail) and tells a story about how he became infatuated with his grandfather's car upon being dropped off for his first day of public school. It also sets up the basement to be a scary place, and in the end he is forced to go down there to clean and he discovers that the old car he loved was willed to him (although it was sold), and he decides he needs to have it. What I would like to see in this story is that I want more to happen and I would like to know more of the emotional impacts that were had by Darroll. The setting seems very real but I would like to know slightly more about what the narrator actually cares about. The story also seems to be lacking in backbone and something to force it into being compelling. I would enjoy it if there was a scene of real action in it, involving Darroll against his parents or on his persuit of actually procuring the car of his dreams. The descriptions that were used were good and original largely, and it never seemed too dull. I would just like a little bit more.

Response to "Safe"

The story "Safe" had its good points and bad. It follows the story of a young woman named Alexandra, presumably recently graduated from college, as she is alone at home with her dog one evening. It gives you a lot of backstory and insight to the narrator's thoughts throughout the piece and that actually makes up the majority of the story, telling a large deal about how Alexandra has no trust for men and that her brother and mother have a large amount of dislike for the divorced father of the family. When she takes a shower, her protective dog is not around her normally and realizes that something is amiss, and eventually after some thoughts and actions from her fear she is assaulted and nearly raped. It is at the very end that the perpetrator never succeeds and he is arrested as the cops come. I felt like the story did an excellent job of building tension. You could tell throughout the story that something major was being built up to, and when a moment really makes Alexandra scared, it is told well on paper. I did feel like the story was very predictable though. The whole thing was set up to go in basically one direction, because nothing was really told other than negative thoughts on the father and details scattered around. I felt like there were a number of things that were unnecessary for the story. Also I felt like it was overloaded with commas. I felt like many things were said to give the character a voice, but I am not sure that this was accomplished and much of it just came off as being unpolished unfortunately. It seemed to drag out a long time to get to the point it ended at. Also, the characters need to seem more real.

Response to "Once in a Lifetime"

I found "Once in a Lifetime" by Jhumpa Lahiri to be a slightly odd story that I did not actually ejoy to a high degree until towards the end. The story itself did not quite grasp me as an incredibly compelling storyline and it got to feeling a little drawn out. This process did allow the reader to get into Hema's head a good bit, but I felt like we were lacking from what we might have been able to gain about her because of her lack of interaction. There was not much action going on in the story and it made it come off as a bit dry. The story itself was told in the interesting manner of telling memories of time together, from Hema to the son of her parents' friends as their family came to stay with theirs. It talks monotinously about the trivial things that went on in the household and how Hema internally was bitter or thoughtful or excited about one thing or another in regard to the two families and their dynamics. There also was a large focus on the seeming romantic element of the feelings by Hema, but those never materialized within the story. What I did like was the way this seemed to somewhat mislead the reader from the actual conflict that is revealed later. I thought it was neat the way that the story jerked you away from the dry lead up and kind of tied a lot of things together at the end, where the boring things from before all of a sudden were given some meaning. Like the fact of how he loved the snow, or the way Hema and the mothers went to go bra shopping. After this connection was made, however, I wanted there to be more interaction and action. This could be said of my opinion on the piece as a whole but I felt like it missed out at the end by not giving the reader a lot to drive it forward. The story read in a fluid way and it had some good descriptions that I felt played up the actual culture that was being portrayed. I just wish there was more done to reel me in or at least really bag me at the end when the bombshell of the breast cancer is dropped.

Response to "Password Protected"

To begin with, I am glad that the piece turned out to be more serious than it originally seemed, with its focus on Facebook. The story at first is introduced as being about a girl who is taking care of the facebook of Thomas, who you soon later learn to be her brother. It is told that he is ill in some way and you learn slowly throughout the story that he actually had leukemia. The story continues to follow the girl as she interacts with her brother's facebook page, and it has a couple of interesting memories and thought provoking injections that are telling. This all leads up to the end where you learn that Thomas has actually been dead this whole time and at that point for me it becomes creepy. And I hope that that was the intention because I felt like it was accomplished very well, where the story doesnt really have that much of a foreboding sense or anything but looking back on it from the near-end it seems very odd and creepy that she wants to make her brother "immortal". Its almost like a villain type of thing in my mind. I found it odd the way Thomas was introduced and I didnt especially like the way he was brought in without knowing his role, and led to a slightly confusing first part of his memories. It does however fit with the slow technique of how the reader slowly learns more and more about the characters throughout the storyline. It was formatted well with few grammatical errors, although there were instances where wording seemed unrefined or just odd. Pretty good story for the most part.

Response to "The Bleeps and Blips of Life"

On the whole, I felt like Shelby's story was very good in that it was well constructed and truly moved and acted as a compelling piece of literature. The story is about a woman named Anna who is with her comatose and cancer infected father in the hospital. While she is there, her younger sister, Karen, comes to visit her and their father. It is revealed through their conversation and narration that Anna has a poor relationship with her sister and their mother and has detached herself from them for the most part, remaining close to only her father. Karen tries to convince her that she should pull the plug on their father and at first Anna is disapproving but at the end, the change comes when she decides to go along with her sister's persuasions.

There were a number of things in this story that I really enjoyed as far as the writing itself is concerned. For one thing, I really thought it had very good transitions from point to point that made the story not seem long and helped it flow. This held true throughout much of the piece but the one place I felt like it lacked was on page 8 when the reader is introduced to the memory with the glass. I think it would have worked better to actively have her thinking back to the memory, which would be something that would help lead her to her decision. I also thought that the story had some really good tension building and that the dialogue seemed worth putting on paper. As I wrote on the paper's notes, I though that there were scenes that were worth making into a story. I found that there were some inconsistencies with the voice a little bit throughout, where at times it was very high diction with elaborate description and at other times it seems sparse and almost hateful. I also would have liked to be introduced to the name of Anna earlier, as well as specific age. The story itself has some points that I consider to be oddities but for the most part well polished and good.

Response to "Series of Omissions"

In the story that Matt wrote this week, I see that he took a slightly different approach than had been taken for the most part. The story he wrote, "Series of Omissions", was a very different story, if I would classify it as a story. To me, it read as just a long eulagy. It is merely a remembrance of the family members who no longer have the father of the family with them in life. The story keys in on a few facts and memories, and it seems to simply go through these one after another with the recurring theme of beginning the paragraphs with "He is survivied by...". You then learn of the complexities of the late father's life through what these other people remember of him. I like this writing tool, as it is indirect but still forthright in everything it presents. In the way that many times people often are too blunt or too vague in the way they tell a story, this does a good and interesting job of presenting it all without beating you over the head. There are a number of characters in this story, but you are given no names other than Norman O'Connor but only the family roles that these people live out. I was somewhat conflicted if I thought that more names would be helpful, but I decided I like it because you are at least given enough of background information to be able to infer many things about character traits. In the end, I feel like there was a nice and complete idea given of who Norman was, and it is truly intriguing, but the story itself if somewhat lacking. The only problem is that it wasn't written exactly as a story and since the main character is already dead, it leaves no room for character development. It was peculiar but enjoyable, and I felt like it was written with skill and precision from line to line. Good stuff on the whole.

Incarnations of Burned Children

I thought this story was very interesting, and covered a topic that was somewhat chilling in how plain but fearsome it is. It was a very short story that was about the immediate aftermath of an accident in a home kitchen where a toddler was scalded by a boiling pot of water, and the reactions by the parents, specifically the father as he attempted to ease his ailing child. He quickly reacts to the problem and immediately puts the toddler in the sink to put cold water on the scalding areas, doing his best to ignore the screams of his child. At the end he attempts to remove the diaper and realizes that it collected the burning water, scarring his tormented child in the nether regions, and then he thinks through the reprocussions of what this event has done for the future of the kid. there were a number of things that I liked and a few that I did not. The story, bing very short, was able to build and hold tension throughout the entire piece. It was impressively done, doing a good job to convey how hectic and worried the event would be in real life. It also does a good job of conveying the emotions without spelling them out for you. It is all so bunched together that it shows how quickly the event and thought pass through in a situation like this. I didn't feel like the voice that was used was necessarily helpful to the piece in driving it forward. The use of 'mommy' and 'daddy' placed the reader in a third party observer, but I simply found it to be a little bit odd, especially when the emotion and tension of the story seemed so personal. On the whole, I thought it was very moving, and painted what I assume to be a fairly accurate portrayal of this disturbing event.

Response to "Baking Cookies"

To be blunt, I really liked this short story. At the beginning it had a good setup to establish the characters. There were only a few instances where I felt like the language it used did not completely fit the young childish voice, but for the most part I thought it was done quite well. For instance, when he says that something was his "favorite type of blue", i felt like this and moments like it really captured the voice in its simplicity very well. As the story moved on it slowly started to have weird moments that made me worry that something was up but I didn't know where to place my fears. The moment when the abuse actually happened still caught me off guard and was incredibly charged, bringing about a large conflict that wasn't spelled out for the reader but introduced within the flow of the story. The characters were very well developed, both the mother and child, and it really felt like the reader was in the head of the kid. The pacing was done well as it brought you along without going too fast or slow at any point, and I liked the way little things were revealed through the thought process of a child. Overall, excellent story I thought.

Response to "A Different Place"

In this story I thought that the story seemed to move forward very well. There were not really any points where there was a sort of hangup that slowed the piece down. there were a number of points that I felt the story was lacking in. The story is apparently about a man that reveives a phone call from his father, who was apparently on vacation in Costa Rica. His father was in soome sort of accident on the trip along with others. Derrick, a friend of some kind, was emergency rushed out and eventually he died. At the end, the reader learns that the main character could have gotten them to come home early, and you assume he may be blaming himself. I was almost surprised by how similar this story was to Rovert's first story, as far as content is concerned. Similarly, I thought this story was somewhat lacking in the emotional connection with the characters. I does not reveal a great deal about feelings and relationships and personalities of anyone. There is no point where I felt like I was fully invested in it and like I was actually in the story. There was no setting at all and an addtion of that may help it. The conflict just did not reach out to the reader, and the end should have been more precise in my opinion.

Response to "kids"

I thought "Kids" moved very well from beginning to end, telling an interesting story. The character is very well established and the piece has a continual voice. The story is apparently about a young teenage girl who has been shipped off to camp and she takes in many observations about how the other girls at the camp are acting far too old for themselves. At the end there is a girl who says she likes a boy and then another girl ends up sleeping with him. Then it hits finality when it gives the lesson and you learn that the girl wasn't even a virgin. One thing that I was the biggest fan of, even though it led to a well developed character, was how much you spelled it out. It seemed like every paragraph has designed to have one thing that said to your face that she still considered herself young. Also as a more minor point, I really would have liked it if the camp counselor's age was established earlier. Also I am curious if Jeremy was in there with her smoking. Another thing that I think could perhaps be altered about the story is that I would like to have known a little bit earlier where they are. The first page of mystery works well but it still seemed to have too much confusion for too long. I wanted to feel in the story earlier and its hard to do that without knowing what environment you are in. Or perhaps that is just because I never went to camp...

Response to "Chase"

What is unique about this story and what really makes me enjoy it is how stylized it is. I think it fully accomplishes this throughout its entirety. It seems to set up the mood very well in a way that complements the personality of Caroline. I see the stroy as being about a young woman named caroline and the time she met up with her ex boyfriend, who gave her herpes. This storyline is peppered with flashbacks that tell about he backsground of their relationship. As far as the storyline goes, I like most of it because I felt like it had a good flow and never seemed to feel forced but when it got to the end, the character didn't have the revelation in the way I wanted and expected her to. I expected it to end with more grandeur. I liked the personality that was used before and would like it if this could have been used but just at an amplified level. The story has a lot of really good descriptions that are used throughout the piece and I thoroughly enjoyed those, but I would perhaps make the piece feel more active.