Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham
I've read "The Road By The River". Here are my first impressions.
Spoiler:
It's compelling, but obviously a rather uncomfortable read. It's a study of grief with a glimmer of light at the end. We are witness to the events leading from the car crash to Ricky's eventual arrival at acceptance, to the point where she can finally move on.
However, although Ricky is the protagonist, she takes no overt plot actions during the story until the very end. She is driving and observes, she goes to the river and observes, she sits in a near vegetable state and half-observes, dulling herself with pills, until finally something is thrust in front of her which cuts through and awakens her.
To make this sequence more satisfying for the reader, I think you need to put us right inside Ricky's head throughout. It's inside her thoughts that the character trauma and eventual growth are happening. We aren't as invested in her father, her mother, or Ginnie - other than knowing that her father is a big gentle man we don't know much about any of them - so as written we're still invested in Ricky through the second half, but we're mostly seeing her from the outside.
I realise that's really, really hard to do. An alternative might be to make the middle section - when Ricky is lost to us - from well inside her father's POV. This way we'd find out more about him, and connect more deeply to how Ricky's depression is affecting him, and by extension her mother and sister. We'd then have more invested in her snapping out of it.
It's not clear who gives her the photo which does the trick, but seeing the middle section from the father's POV would give us a good reason to suspect that it was him. (You could even make this more explicit if you show us the father looking at the same picture earlier - with all the attendant emotions that would summon up.)
So, perhaps have a look at the POV choices throughout? At the moment the first section is limited third person, very much from Ricky's POV, but moves to omniscient narrator in the second section, although that section starts still in a way that could still be her POV ("It wasn't very clear to Ricky how she came to be at her parents' place.") which I found a bit confusing. By the time we get to "Her eyes were flat-looking and sunk in their sockets. Her face was waxen and colorless." it's clear we're in omniscient.
Details
Little Michael had been bouncing around the house like a noisy rubber ball the last three days, diving in and out of boxes as he helped them pack. Mostly his two-year-old body had been in the way, and he got his fair share of exasperated scoldings, but he was too wound up to let it bother him. He was excited about moving down south, and especially about seeing Grandma and Grandpa.
This paragraph really brought Michael to life, told us they were moving, evoked the hassle and bustle of packing, and gave us an impression of her parents. Nice work.
She stood rooted on the shoulder, fear fighting an impulse to jump into the water.
I couldn't believe that Ricky wouldn't jump into the river after her son. I don't think it would do anything other than help the plot to let her do this in a failed attempt. It would raise the tension significantly and we'd have more sympathy with her.
She could just see her son's head over the wings of the carseat.
The various descriptions of Michael in the first scene confused me. At first I wasn't sure if he was in the car in front or beside her, but then figured out that she was seeing him up ahead, in the back seat and she could just see the top of his head over the back of the car seat. However, I was bothered by her seeing that 'his blonde head was lolled to one side. ' Car seat backs are deliberately tall things to protect the head, and if lolled to the side you might see just a tiny bit of crown. You've got a great opportunity to ratchet up the tension here, if she mulls that they really need to get him a new seat as he's outgrowing his first one!
However, he then goes from "the sleep of an exhausted baby on a car ride" to "leaning forward and waving enthusiastically" in a few seconds. Again, I'm not sure how she would be able to see more than the flutter of a small hand. Bear in mind that behind the car seat is the Volvo back seat itself.
Also, isn't the purpose of a car seat to prevent a child from leaning forward?
When you say "She could see her husband fighting with the wheel, her son alert in his seat", I think you need to preface it with some comment about the car now having spun to being side on, or slightly face-on to her. She couldn't see that from behind, I feel. Maybe have the rear of the Volvo go over the bank first?
Little things
"The rain let up at Rainbow Summit."
Slightly odd name for a section of road that has a river alongside it.
Ricky
This made my brain do a leap which jarred me out right at the start. It's such a male name that the 'she' that follows it was a surprise. Does it need to be Ricky?
sure enough, there were the lights of a train
I wasn't sure at this point whether she was seeing this oncoming or in her mirror coming up behind her.
Graham |
Some good stuff to look at here.
Jim