Latitude, Longitude and Four Dimensions

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Navi!

Interesting title. May I ask for what contest? (As in, is it on YWS?)

I shall review it in a day or two. I just downloaded it now. I have work from college, so it will probably take some time, but I definitely will.
Oh and I'll PM you the review.

Cheers,
~Lava

Decided to just put it there. No attachment .

Hello Navita! Glad I saw this before I left.

It seems obvious to you that you should have changed before you came.

No, too much to start with. An interesting hook, but unnecessary words are marring it's effectiveness. Try, instead: You should have changed before you came.

One smiles at you when you refuse a drink. You always have.

This seemed a little oddly phrased to me, again. Perhaps: One smiles when you refuse a drink; you always do. I took out the "at you" because that's implied, changed "have" to "do" because the verb is "refuse" and not "have refused", and connected them with a semi-colon because you already use a lot of short sentences and I think the semi-colon helps keep that crisp atmosphere while offering a variation. Plus, semi-colons are under-appreciated.

Yes. That is why.

What is why what? Your previous image is the rickshaw men's hard work, and this line doesn't seem to be talking about that. It's a little vague.

Overall

Very interesting. Much harder to follow than what I'm used to-- I'm going to reread it, to see if I can patch up some character and timeline confusion. At first I assumed that "you" are the same character throughout the story, but in the end it seems to switch to Papa, so I'm going to go back and see if I can trace these narrator swaps.

*

Okay, yes. After a second read-through, I see the alternating perspectives. I will tell you, though, that it took a second read-through to notice that. Second person is always tricky, but this voice, this "you", is very generic between the two characters. I understand why, since readers should be able to catch the POV switch by the end, but these two perspectives melt in to each other almost monotonously. The whole tone of the piece is sleepy, drifting, a little gloomy. And that's okay! But that means that your husband and wife are hard to differentiate, their voices lacking any defining spark or emotion. And even though I think this was partially intentional, I feel like their personalities, feelings, and thoughts are underplayed.

As far as the locations and timelines, I am a bit confused. The mother is in India, where both of them were originally from, yes? And then they both moved to Ireland (?), at least for a short while, before the mother moved back to India, while Papa stayed in Ireland for his job. And then, finally, they can afford to be together once again...in New Zealand. The bit that puzzles me is that Papa is spending his third Christmas in Ireland, and Mama has been living in India for three years, so I'm not sure where they're paths overlapped or how they have two daughters. Especially if the younger one was already a couple months old when they left-- that places the older one at least a year old before Mama and the girls moved, which would account for a fourth Christmas.

If that makes any sense? Basically, timelines and locations are a little muddled, just because they're mentioned haphazardly here and there and we're not given a way to string them together into a cohesive chain of events. You drop off city names, but for someone like, say, me, many of them I've never heard of.

As far as the actual writing goes, very well done. Even though it seemed gloomy, distant, and at times a little apathetic, I have a feeling you did that on purpose. The combination of second person and present tense, to me, always gives a piece an airy, almost ethereal quality, and it fit well for this story. So, bravo! In parts, especially towards the beginning, the prose wasn't as tight as it could be-- for this sort of narrative you need every word to resound with meaning, every sentence ring true and important. And so you need to weed out even the smallest of unnecessary words or phrases, just to seal up the effect. This fragmented atmosphere you have makes this particularly important.

Finally, it is highly possible that I misinterpreted some, if not all, of the storyline. Please inform me if this is so! I can discuss where you lost me, then.

So! Very impressive. I do love your writing and hope to see much more of it littering the forums. Best of luck with any edits for this, as well as the contest, and PM me if you need anything or want to discuss something.

~Evi

Let me get the squeeing out of the way first: second person! I love it. It gives the switching perspectives a certain uniformity that brings the similarities in thoughts closer and the differences starker, and still has this semi-personal feel to it, a bit distanced but not as much as third person would.

Now. I'll try for a section by section review (which may be more of a selection of things I like than any proper criticism. Sorry :P)

It seems obvious to you that you should have changed before you came.

I agree with Evi, this sentence is a bit heavy. I think it's mostly the "to you" that makes it so: just removing it, or replacing it by "now" improves the flow.

the kind that warps the plastic blue of the sky so that it looks chapped and frozen

I like this image. I like it a lot :P

You return her smile. You think about them.

It's the contrast here that I appreciate also: the smile versus that first hint of where the longing comes from. We know he's alone, and this is an indication of who he's missing.

Your English is fading; you’re used to writing in Hindi again

Distance shown as loss of language. Yes. Yes.

You twist your hands in your lap. He would have remembered. You wonder if you should tell them now.

I'm a little confused at to the exact meaning of this sentence, to be honest. What would he have remembered? Christmas? The gifts? The leaving?

I like the contrast in names between this part and the previous one, as well as the parallel "he would have remembered" and "you try to remember his name".

As they open the door, you shake harder at the heat.

I found this sentence a little awkward, I think at the simultaneity of the door opening and the feeling of the heat. I'm not sure exactly. Even such a simple change as "They open the door and you shake harder at the heat" might help, because it gives me a sense there might be a delay, as tiny as it may be, between the two.

It's strange how "the blue dawn" seems like such an unfamiliar image. It works beautifully though, and is a great callback to the earlier (winter) blue sky.

Your own house. In your own country. The kids were excited.

This calls back memories for me. That was the plan, yes. And plans are rarely set in stone. (although you say later that Neha was "only a few months old when [he] left for Ireland - her being excited at the plan bothers me a bit)
Also, ♥ at use of language again.

Asha asks you if she will see her friends again. You tell her no.

Her face falls for a moment, but then she jumps up. But we get to see Papa again, she says, smiling.

Yes, you say. We get to see Papa. You turn to the suitcase, suddenly unable to see.

It’s strange, but you haven’t cried this much in a while.

I like the mix of joy and sadness here; the difference between the child's quick adaptability and her mother's deeper sorrow - which I do think might benefit from just one or two more lines? I can feel it here, but it is... too quiet, if that makes sense. Earlier she was a quiet sort of melancholy sadness, and the apparition of tears with so little warning jars a bit, especially "this much" of it.

the way the asterisks of stars blow on the crickets at night,

I love this image.
And again. Language, this time as way of getting closer to his children, even as they set him apart as a stranger, someone not native to this country.

You tell yourself it is the lack of furniture, that it is the bare surfaces and empty cupboards here that make it echo so loud.

Confession: I love echoes, and the use of them. I'm just not quite feeling them here. The sentence, the space here is too bare, too constricted. You need space for an echo to occur. Space, and hollows.

She looks at him and you can see – and you know that he can see – that she does not remember him.

Implicit distance, set into physical. Yes.

You feel like nothing has changed; you slip into conversation as easily as you always have.

The difference in perception is interesting, but maybe show it a bit more? There's a feel at least from me that the wife is not as much at ease with this situation as her husband.

Your breath catches. You glance at your wife. She is watching you. You wonder if this is the time, the place. So much in that one word.

Well, you begin. Well.

I am such a sucker for uncertain endings. Yes. Because things aren't always clear-cut and simple.

...aaaaaaaand yes. I really liked this. And am absolutely thrilled you've tried second person. And added present tense in the mix. It gives this great sense of immediacy, and this distance too. You've done a nice job on the contrasting settings and thoughts: Ireland vs India, forgetting vs remembering, future vs past, father vs mother, and the interweaving of alternating parts from each other's point of view works great.

Hey,

I didn't have a problem with the alternating perspectives. Lord knows I've done it enough myself. I've had stories where I've got three different perspectives twining in past, present, and future tense, third, first and second person. Generally, it's not very reader friendly, but it lends a nice cinematic quality to a piece. What's more, something with rapidly interrupted POVs is fun to write. It allows for diversity, guarantees you won't loose interest.

I won't nitpick, as you're an accomplished fiction writer. There are very few chinks in your wall. The nature of the wall is all I'll comment on.

You mentioned to me in the chat that it amused you that my poetry and prose are so similar. Of course, I didn't know quite what you meant by that -- "amused" is a loaded word. I took it that you thought it was a bit "unprofessional" to blend the lines between prose and poetry. Of course, here, I see very clearly defined lines between your prose and poetry. For one, you are considerably less imagery-oriented, less focused on the writing itself than on the story, and a development of the characters, which is probably how it should be. You are relatively sparse here. Minimalistic. There is sometimes sarcasm, and a tongue-in-cheek wordplay/playfulness in your poems. Here, it is all business. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition.

I have mixed emotions about the story itself. On one hand, I really appreciate the simplicity. The relative plotlessness. Keep in mind this is all based on a first read-through -- I found the main themes of this piece to be conveyed in the latter end. Themes relating to the uprooting of families, a certain level of strangeness between a husband and wife who have been long parted, the weariness of learning the culture of a new country. It would be interesting/helpful to know the purpose/prompt of the contest you're writing for.

Anyway, in a word, I appreciated the story for the quietness of the plot, focusing more on realism, and form. On the other hand, I'd appreciate a little bit more characterization, information, depth, action. This piece is almost a little too quiet. It is too conscious of its quietness. I'd appreciate a little less static somehow. A little less weightless dreaminess. Of course, that may have been what you were going for, and that's fine. I just found it to be a little bland.

I like the nod toward Hindi culture, and Ireland. I'd be interested to know how much experience you have with both of these, because you handled them both wonderfully. Also, I get the sense of an undisclosed tension between husband and wife. Is it cultural? Or is the wife keeping something from her husband, experiencing a falling out with him? If it's just what I said, a certain level of strangeness due to separation, I think that the wife's reactions/emotions may have been portrayed a little too melodramatically.

Of course, the crowning jewel of this piece -- the main attraction, so to speak -- is the interesting little change to second person in the latter end. I liked it a lot. It added a subtle, but powerful quirk to the atmosphere, and managed to speak volumes about the characters, and their relationship. Great choice.

It’s cold, it’s the kind of cold that makes your thoughts freeze in their tracks, the kind that warps the plastic blue of the sky so that it looks chapped and frozen. It’s about to crack like glass any moment.

I didn't care for this description. There was no spark of originality to it. And it was rather plain. The objects themselves -- plastic, glass, freezing -- are all things that convey no excitement or emotion. Jazz it up a little here. I want to see Navita here!

They’re jolly people.

I guess I'm just not used to the word "jolly".

That sums it up for me. This was well-done, well-written. You have an accessible and attractive way of writing fiction -- just as strong, if not stronger than your poetry. My only complaint is an air of sterility.

-Kylan

I'm glad the story has a happy ending. And that happy ending is? Toilet paper. And silverware. That made me laugh because it's so very true.

You set the mood very nicely in the first paragraph. Alone, cold, wearing the wrong clothes, looking in on other people's happiness and nervously taking part like a stranger. That sums up being alone in a foreign world for an extended period of time. The part about the plastic blue sky is rather misleading, however, since your writing becomes more to-the-point afterward and we don't see such description again until we get to New Zealand (and it's gone again after that).

It did take me a while to figure out the narrator change. While intriguing, it's not nice to purposely confuse the reader. It would have been nice to know in the first set that the narrator is male. Because by the second set, we learn the narrator is female and so we continue with that thought. I'm not sure if we ever explicitly learn one is male until the two narrators meet (or I'm just slow on the uptake!). Also, their voices do sound rather similar, so it's a little hard to tease them apart at first.

I love the mention of the loss of language.

It’s colder than you thought it would be.

Oh yeah, another thing I learned. Everyone installs air conditioners, no one installs heaters. But for 3 weeks, it gets cold enough where you would want a heater and they suffer through the cold for it. Sheesh.

The conversation between the mom and the kids is presented in an interesting way. No quotes, few "she saids." It suits the dreamy tone very well. If it were a movie, I could imagine the words floating up out of water.

However, the next conversation with the O'Connor woman is too brisk and business-like to suit the dreaminess. The very subject of the dialogue causes it to move faster than the rest of the story. Particularly the "Travelled to Belfast? Yes. All over the north? Nod." sounds like a machine gun interrogation.

I like how he can't remember the boy's name, though. It adds a longing note and he may never know.

And I like how you choose a subtle manner of telling us why they're leaving India, using an example you see on the street everywhere everyday. It tells us that they're leaving because the everyday is too hard, that it's tiring simply to look around.

It’s green.

Love how this comment stands on its own and is important...because it is so important. Moving from the brown and gray Delhi to the more humid and slightly tropic Chennai, the first thing I noticed was more greenery.

Aaaand love the ending. Time and distance traversed, and it ends with the simplest of scenes: a family at a dinner table entertaining the innocent, probing questions of a child.

Overall a very enjoyable read!

Hi Navita,

The reason we chose you to rise to the helm of that 2000-word contest was because of writing like this. It's good stuff, refreshingly tonic in its simplicity, and even better to see that your style has ascended. I detected only the skeleton crew of a story; you chose to participate in a venture of character and plumbing of the flicks of the wrist that go into making a broth instead of the taste of the broth itself. I don't mind that, not here. You pulled it off well.

I shall look for no glaring systemic errors here, for you have none. Instead, I'm going to pick out parts that appear sores on this smooth skin, so you may prune them and make this piece even more beautiful.

Navita wrote:You wonder why you didn't change before you came. It’s cold, it’s the kind of cold that makes your thoughts freeze in their tracks, the kind that warps the plastic blue of the sky so that it looks chapped and frozen. It’s about to crack like glass any moment. It already snowed twice today. You thrust your hands towards your pockets, forgetting you are wearing scrubs. Inside, they have begun eating. You turn the handle.

This I do not appreciate. The paragraph itself seemed like a writer's battle - to prositrize or poeticize? It was a spasm of rapid-fire and connective imagery which then suddenly faltered and made way for the brittle bullet-like description that follows through to the very end of the story. Why have the odd moment in the beginning, where you seem to draw out through a threaded spool the coldness of freezing thoughts, plastic sky chapped like kissing lips, cracking like glass, etc in the same sentence and then change your tone for the next billion or so paragraphs? You may have done this purposefully, but whatever it was supposed to accomplish is lost. Keep your style steady unless you have some motive that the reader can actually discern.

It’s your third Christmas alone in Ireland. You’re on call. You might have to leave any moment. The neighbours called you for dinner anyway. They’re jolly people. One smiles at you when you refuse a drink. You always have.

"You always have." I really hope that this little informational tid-bit does something for your story, because right now its extraneous junk that's clearly a ploy to make this sound more "gritty" and "short" without having anything of value in the words themselves. After I read the story completely, I'll edit this comment if I feel differently. But if this comment stays here when I'm done with the full review, consider it a valid part of the review.

Their families have come. You settle down at the table to eat, glancing around. In the far corner of the room, there is a woman feeding her son. An older boy stands beside her. She brushes the hair out of her child’s eyes and looks up for a moment. You return her smile. You think about them.

"Feeding her son" is vague. Give me some senses here. Sight would be the obvious one, but it wouldn't hurt for the reader to detect the strong scent of whatever it is that's cooked.

It’s hard. You have been living here three years.

Is this really necessary? You've done such a beautiful job of telling without telling in all the other information you present that this seems to be a gigantic welt on the story.

You think about calling him, then remember the time difference.

^ Exactly like this. Information told without it being too obvious.

Okay, forget the line-by-line critique; I will not embarrass a good piece by subjecting it to such abject mundanity.

And rest assured that this was a good piece. I did, however, want to point out one aspect of your story that I was most grateful for: It's not pretentious as are many, many other pieces on here that make use of ethnic differences. You didn't try shotgunning in terms/places/events/etc that look starkly out of place to the rest of the story simply so that your characters can scream "Look at me! I'm INDIAN!" It flowed well into the undertone of the plot; the reader could enjoy the piece without having race shoved in his face every three lines.

Do be careful about the consistency of your style, however, if you're using it to make a point (as I think you are, what with the strained tension between the couple and all). I know this is going to sound hypocritical, especially in light of my first comment in this review. But that was different; that was a seemingly random asteroid of imagery that pounded into the surface of your story, wiping out all the reasonable assumptions the reader could make about format and flow. However, it would bear you well to tweak how often you speak in clipped sentences depending on the mood. The main character of the story surely is not so static as to be cold-faced and iced-handed throughout the entire piece. Stretch out your imagery and description slightly in places that you feel the character needs to join with her surroundings more than when she needs to undergo introspection, which is where all the short, stocky phrases come in. It's the gentle turns of your story that have made it so memorable; a punch to the gut is one thing, but someone tapping lightly on your shoulder also precipitates a reaction - some would say even a more powerful one than if someone were being punched. It's these tappings that you seem to be uniquely gifted at portraying, so do so when painting mini-pictures throughout your story. If this huge chunk of paragraph doesn't make sense, please do PM me about it.

A good one. Keep working.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Hi, Navita!

Sorry you've had to wait for this long! (I feel like I've said that in every review I've made recently...) You've gotten such wonderful reviews already, most of which I completely agree with. I'll try my best to say something for myself, as well, though.

Firstly, a couple of short comments:

You can hear the boy singing carols in the kitchen. You try to remember his name. 

The last sentence feels a bit repetitive to me. As much as I like the slow pace all these full stops create, it wouldn't sound as repetitive if it was "What was his name, again?"

You don’t think you’ll need it there. 

The "there" is like a stone wall under a long downhill – in short, abrupt. Maybe you could replace it with "anymore".


I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed a story this much on here. It's so... every letter, every character in this story counts. You don't just write about the characters, you're inside them. You know exactly what impressions and interpretations you want your readers to have, which means you're clearly one extra step ahead. Everything is done so very skillfully, it almost scares me. You're a great writer, Navita, and I think a lot can be learnt from you.

Thanks!

Demeter
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