Such a sweet story! I totally didn't see that coming. There's such a lovely atmosphere to this piece. It's hard not to like characters that are good and faithful without being sickly-sweet.
I did, however, notice a couple errors: in the scene where Maggie is having breakfast with her grandmother, you mistakenly refer to her as "Angela". Shortly after you call her "Maggy".
My name is Angela, too, so I sort of feel like this story is just for me :)
This had a nice, simple feel to it, sort of like the old Great Brain books I used to read as a kid. It moved a little fast, though, and felt somewhat condensed; the scary parts sprang out as suddenly as the cave creature. I would've liked some more slow buildup of tension, description, and perhaps some character development. Also, I believe you said 'lie' when you meant 'lay'. I liked the brothers, though.
This was really good as a feminist metaphor. It's hard to imagine a character who would rather be dead than have a husband, but I guess others have in the past. Would be more feminist if she went and lived her own life without him, but the message wouldn't be as powerful.
You have one typo, though, where you say 'poise' instead of 'pose'.
I like the second stanza because you play with your words. And the line 'smitten is a dirty word these days'. It's true, because the very word makes me think of overused plots, but people still get smitten anyway, and always will.
Also the bit where you say 'she laughed and I remembered what my name was' is the center of a really good rhythmic bit. Cool rhythms are the best part of poetry.
The ending is a bit weak, I agree. Suggested alternate last lines: "She was my favorite detour", or "I couldn't believe my luck / when she parked her car, stepped onto the shoulder / and held out her thumb"
This is a little bit terrifying. I suppose that's the point. I like that her greed let to her downfall, and that you show the man's actions as merely a different kind of greed, paralleling her lust for the bracelet.
It's disjointed at times though; you have some run-on sentences to sort out. Also you should stay in past or present tense. In the first paragraph when you say 'it was huge', it's not immediately clear what you mean.
This is a lovely piece with a tight rhythm and some striking off-rhymes. The only line I didn't really like was the one about dancing in the rain, just because that's a little overdone. I could really feel the spirit of the heroine though, and the way the narrator feels about her.
Your second sentence is a run on, specifically a comma splice. It needs a conjunction. You also say 'there was yet miles to go' instead of 'there were yet miles to go'.
You have a fantastically witty style, but I don't know what to make of your plot. There's this discontented Simon Bird type character who's sad because he's not special and has writer's block -- this amuses me. And then with very little transition, the Deus Ex Machina Fairy unceremoniously drops a poignant tragedy in his lap -- this annoys me. But it turns out my annoyance was all part of your plan! The joke is that even with his free gift of inspiration, he still can't bring himself to write, proving once and for all that he, and not fate, is the problem in his life.
But the other joke is, he must have eventually written the story down, which is probably meant to be ironic.
There's definitely a huge amount of emotion in this piece. It's very expressive. However, it also has a few grammar issues, such as when you say 'my brother comes in', which is present tense when you need past, and in the first paragraph you say 'to much money' instead of 'too much money'. Also, I think you should break the second paragraph into several paragraphs and describe more about each situation, maybe organizing more so that you can tell which incident she's talking about.
I like how you talk about your home being a small world, and then mention that your school is a small world, too. You should expand the parallelism there.
This kind of read like an action movie, so I hope that's what you were going for. The characters have a lot of great attitude and spunk. It's vivid. Could be more vivid if you added some more action verbs. The word 'being' in the last sentence of the first paragraph stuck out especially -- it would flow a lot better if you took those 'being's out. Don't worry. It's grammatically acceptable.
You also need to not capitalize your dialogue tags; I found that a little distracting.
I was interested by the subject matter of this story, but wish you would have shown the scenes described instead of telling us about them. Narration is good, but better when mixed with dialogue and description.
I liked the line about never running out of whiskey. It seemed to me that the father had poured all his fears for his wife and his paranoia about his new sinful country into his religion, which makes for an interesting character motivation.
You include many briefly described images with this poem, so what the reader sees largely depends on his memories. The diction is nice and old school, always good for a nature poem. I especially like the last line.
Between the title and the subject matter, I'm sensing a biblical allusion. Noah's flood destroyed the unsatisfying fruits of the Garden of Eden, only to save the remains by a great miracle.
This was glorious. I love how you set everything up perfectly: the anxiety of the new situation, the happy anticipation of his new life and hot neighbors and plenty of room, the confusion, the logical reactions slowly giving way to more and more pain as he grew frustrated and made all his problems worse ... classic. Your style was minimalistic and matter-of-fact, but it complemented the subject matter very well.
Like everyone else I did want to know what the sound was in the end, especially with all that setup with the weird childhood stuff scattered around the apartment. My personal hypothesis was 'there's a Furby at the bottom of one of the boxes', or some sort of trick from his father. Leaving it open-ended was okay too though.
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