It reviews by Kellnerin (4.00 / 1) #10 Sat Apr 05, 2008 at 09:15:35 AM EST
This WFC marks the beginning of my resolution not to try to say something about every story, but the discussion has been so entertaining so far I think it hardly matters. So here goes:
  • People Have Their Uses I have to admit, I reformatted this before I had properly read it, so I caught bits and pieces of it in that process, words and phrases showing the shifting tone between the sections. (It was a little like reading blues -- the process involves checking the top and bottom of each page to make sure that they flow into each other and nothing has been accidentally dropped from the book -- I'm not sure how much of this practice is still valid given current printing methods, but it's a good way to get a sense of whether you'll like the book, if you don't mind spoilers. Try it next time you're in a bookstore trying to decide if a book will be worth it, if anyone still goes to bookstores.) Anyway, though I had a good impression of this story from that initial pass, when I read it all the way through, it turned out to be more layered than I originally thought. The disembodied voice of the protagonist is haunting, more so than the calculated callousness of the film parody.
  • For Now We See I think I would have found "you look right through me" more effective had I not known it was an It narrative going in. Despite the slow, almost Gertrude Steinian beginning, it turns out there is a there here. I like the descriptions more than the dialogue -- there are some nicely observed moments there, so much so that it almost strains the credulity of an inanimate object POV, for example, she would be more comfortable wearing a purse but wants to be the kind of person who wears a messenger's bag. I found the obsessive tracking of time a bit odd. Still, this made me look (metaphorically) at my windows (and how they see me) in a new way.
  • Dian Bling With all apologies to our esteemed host CRwM, I have to agree with blixco. It was a minor stroke of genius to choose the inanimate object challenge to write in this form, and once you think of it, it's obvious that the twenty-first-century It narrative would be a blog. In fact, it makes me wonder why we don't have a word just for fridge blogs (frog?) The reverse chronological order works from a storytelling perspective, but also reads forwards as an evolution of an online journal. This left me torn between being sorta creeped out and wanting to put the fridge on my watchlist.


--
"Late to the party" is the new "ahead of the curve" -- CRwM


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