Genre: Short
Story Collection
Description:
“… a book of twenty-five unique short stories. They are split into two
categories. One group of narratives tend to illuminate the everyday experiences
and issues of childhood, motherhood, family, marriage, adventure, and so forth.
The other set of tales, however, accentuate the gloomier aspects of life which
imagination dictates. They invoke fear, mystery, the supernatural, malice,
despair, and more. Regardless of the variety of these fictional storylines,
this collection aims to provide reflections and impressions that can be enjoyed
and shared for years to come.”
Author:
In addition to this collection, author
Fleming J. Allen has written a novel and a work of non-fiction.
Appraisal:
The plot or underlying story in some of this collection was
entertaining or interesting to a point, even if the presentation was often
lacking. Other times I was left wondering what the point of the story was. While
the stories in the first half were generally more upbeat and the second half
tended toward darker subjects, I found my opinion was the same with both halves.
The issues I had with the presentation of the stories were numerous. I’ll
hit on some of the high (or low) points in a quick list.
Proofreading was lacking. I found numerous sentences that were obviously
lacking a word or had an extra word or in some other way didn’t make sense
without reinterpretation. Homonym errors were also frequent.
It seemed like redundancy and long lists were the order of the day.
While they increased the word count, they also slowed things down. An example
of redundancy is the mention of a “snow blizzard” (snow is inherent in the
definition of blizzard and specifying snow serves no purpose). Then there are
sentences like this:
“He went to places like: the Washington Monument, Smithsonian National
Museums, Lincoln Memorial, U.S. Capitol, Arlington National Cemetery, Old
Ebbitt Grill, Ben’s Chili Bowl, Indian eateries, and pubs.”
Again, this is way more specific detail than is important. “While in
Washington he visited the typical DC monuments as well as several eating
establishments he’d heard of” or words to that effect would do the trick. Sure,
name one or two examples, but an exhaustive list is only going to put the
reader to sleep. This issue wasn’t just a one-time problem, but a constant. Most
stories had at least one example of this. I didn’t go back to check, but
suspect some had multiple examples.
Another issue was throwing in lots of information about characters or
places in the story that do nothing to contribute to the story, so just bog it
down instead. For example, “They also jumped into the bath or shower to clean
up and changed into their warm pajamas. They had the footed kind.” If having
the “footed kind” of pajamas figured into the story in any way, knowing this
could matter (although there is probably a better way to let us know about it).
But if it doesn’t figure into the story or tell us something important about
the character, it’s just a bunch of useless noise.
Ultimately it was a struggle to read this to the end. The stories need
a lot more polish.
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Format/Typo
Issues:
Numerous proofreading issues that ranged from extra or missing words
to homonym errors and various other problems.
Rating: **
Two Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 115-120,000 words
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