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Review #4755445
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Review by Beholden
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Rated: | (3.5)
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Some questions on reading the first chapter:

Why is it necessary for us to be given so many hints at the complexity of David's relationship with Simon? Presuming that this becomes relevant later in the tale, I still find it strange that we are told so much about David's thoughts about Simon. We don't actually learn anything from it - only that it's ancient history and very complicated. I feel that I just need to know that Simon phones David with a request that he help Moura with her employment problem, and that David agrees to take her on. Beyond that, everything is decoration and it gets in the way of the reader being hooked.

I still think the chapter needs to be shorter and less convoluted. Decide what is essential for the reader to know before he moves on to chapter 2, and then eliminate everything else. It can wait until a more suitable moment to be introduced.

As far as I can see, the essential story so far is this: David (doesn't matter who or what he is) receives a phone call from Simon, an old friend, asking him to assist in the matter of Moura's employment. He agrees to take her on to his staff. That's it - that is the story so far. All else is description of complex relationships that serve only to obscure the point of the chapter. The only detailing that matters is that these people are all known to David from his own history. The complexity of the relationships can wait until a later chapter to be explained.

Second Chapter:

""Sir, oh sorry, Dave?" Today's latest temp, Sarah, poked her head through Dave's office door later that afternoon." Repetition - we've already been introduced to Sarah so you can take it that we know who she is.

As you can see, I read beyond the first chapter. In fact, I read all nine chapters and it changes my view of the first chapter to some extent. It's clear that book is extremely complex in its relationships and that time has to be spent on dealing with these. That's a difficulty in that the readers can easily become bored and uninterested in details they don't see the need for. They may not read far enough to understand why you went into such detail at so early a stage.

Then there's the problem of altering POV (point of view). You tend to announce a character's name as the title of a chapter and then write that chapter from the character's point of view. I had read halfway through before I realised that I'd been reading much of it from the wrong POV. That makes it even more confusing. If you have to swap POV occasionally, you need to make sure the reader understands this. Announcing it through chapter headings isn't enough.

It's a bad idea anyway. Far better (and easier) would be to pick one narrator and tell it from his point of view (as far as I've read, Sam would be best for this approach - Dave seems to fade from prominence after the first few chapters). Even better would be to leave first person narrative out completely and tell the story as an omniscient viewer - the way most books are written.

You also don't need to report entire phone conversations. The way you're doing it is true to life - people do converse in that way - but in written form you have to reduce it to the important facts and leave out the tactful aspproaches, the ums and ers, the meaningful half statements, etc. It just becomes filler and is boring to wade through. All that matters is story and too much detail destroys pace and, with it, story.

As an exercise, I suggest you try rewriting Chapter 1 from a 3rd person POV. Don't tell us anything of what Dave is thinking - the narrator doesn't know that. Just give us the facts. In this way you'll throw the reader into the story immediately, you won't obscure the action with details that cannot mean a thing to a new reader, and you'll establish enough interest to drive the reader on to subsequent chapters.

Finally, I notice there are still several errors in the French you've presented in the text. I know you've changed the examples I mentioned before, but the idea was that you find the rest yourself. Just run everything you want to say in French through Google Translate and that should give you the correct spelling at least.

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Beholden
Nominated for Quills Best Reviewer, 2023
2023 Quill Nominee2023 Quill Finalist


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