Reviewed by Ian
Crash
Reviewed by Ian
This is a first person narrative of the events surrounding an accident at gymnastics practice.
The voice of the narrator is almost disembodied, adding to the feeling of shock and unreality that often accompanies a serious event. The mood is maintained throughout and that is well done. The middle bit is good, interesting, draws the reader on, but then it gets bogged down a bit and loses momentum. It takes a lot of words getting the poor sod out of the door and into some help and it loses the sense of calamity and urgency. There are three things that you might consider Kevin. The first is that early on in the piece, I found a couple of the more adventurous and unusual descriptive lines a bit distracting until I got involved. For example, the 'sound' of eyes turning in sockets, and the bright sunlight filtering 'loudly'. On my track record as a reviewer, though, everyone else will disagree and say it is terrific. The second thing is that while the opening made me interested to find out what was going to happen, there is no real involvement with the characters as characters. At the end, they are all still strangers. And that leads to the third thing, which is that the ending isn't really satisfying. Nothing is resolved. It leaves me asking 'What was the story?' I don't know whether what you describe is based on a real event Kevin, which suggests that it is good, believable description, but it reads more like a report than a story, and it needs something extra to make it come alive.
Reviewed by © Ian
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