Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Mystery/Horror
Approximate word count: 65-70,000 words
Availability
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on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
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Author:
No
information available.
Description:
“Welcome to
Roland's Children Psychiatric Center. Tony Mandushio thought he had it all
figured out. That was until he was sent to a psychiatric center. He finds
himself immersed into a situation he never saw coming. For thirty days his life
is turned completely upside down as he makes lifelong friends and mortal
enemies. However, it's not just about Tony as there are other children who must
face the rigors of young adulthood. Their only chance for survival is to
overcome their fears and resist the obstacles that attempt to prevent them.”
Appraisal:
Several times,
I’ve seen variations on the complaint that “Amazon’s self publishing platform
allows an author to upload his first draft and expect people to pay for it.”
While true, this is the first time I’ve actually seen a book where I wondered
if that had happened. On the plus side, Institutionalized
appeared to have been spell-checked first. Amusing, at least to me when
considering the comments of those complainers, it found its way to Amazon via
Lulu, another self-publishing platform that pre-dates Amazon’s KDP.
An attempt
to list the problems with the writing I found would require writing a book of
my own. It might be an exaggeration to claim that every common beginning writer
mistake made an appearance. It wouldn’t be a very big exaggeration. I’ll try to
hit a few of the low points as examples.
At a high
level, the protagonist is unlikeable. Enough so that a typical reader isn’t going to
care what happens to him. At a more detailed level, there are scenes that have
no relevance. The author seems to think chronicling every move by every
character and every event is required, whether related to the story or not. At
a detailed level, the writing was just plain bad. Here is an example that is
far from the worst, but representative:
Everything was fine until one of the
girls, Sarah, started to cry. Ms. Fernandez rushed to her side. Ms. Fernandez
managed to calm Sarah and she stopped crying. The weird thing was the girl
didn’t know why she was crying. The staff would eventually find out the girl
was manic depressant.
I might
rewrite this as, “Everything was fine until Sarah started to cry. Ms. Fernandez
rushed over and managed to calm her. When asked, Sarah had no idea why she was
crying.”
My rewrite
still isn’t that good, but is a vast improvement on the original, saying
everything that matters in half the words. The reader knows Sarah is “one of
the girls.” Constant repeating of names, an extreme problem in this book, is
often an indication of unclear, verbose writing, in need of more editing. The omniscient
narrator of the story is constantly interpreting what is happening to tell us its
meaning and what the characters are feeling (telling instead of showing).
The last
line of the example paragraph is illustrative of one issue I saw many times.
The narrator keeps telling us things that will happen in the future, but that aren’t
pertinent to the story. If pertinent, we should usually find out when it happens. There are numerous instances of
ham-handed foreshadowing; for example, constantly saying that the characters
lives are going to “be changed forever” or that someone was eventually going to
die.
There may
be a good story buried in Institutionalized,
but a reader is never going to find it while the book is in this condition.
After many rewrites and a good editing job, that might be possible, although
I’m not going to hold my breath. If this writer is serious about being an
author he (or she) would do well to grow an extremely thick skin, read all the
books on the craft of writing he can, and practice, practice, practice.
Eventually a critique group would also be valuable, although joining one now
might be premature.
FYI:
Adult
language and some sexual situations.
Format/Typo Issues:
Although
there were few if any non-words (the author obviously knows how to use spell
check), there were numerous issues with incorrect words, improper grammar, and
other proofing and copy-editing miscues.
Rating: * One star
1 comment:
Oh my. :P
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