Young Writers Society

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

Anyway let's get right to it,

I met Lee on the subway, tracks to London and back, and he smiled when I only had one suitcase. He had a t-shirt with Bob Dylan on the front, it was a young picture, he looked about 23, and his fingernails were long.

“Jesus Georgia, you’re so thin,” he pulled the suitcase from my hands and opened up the car door. I stepped in, and leant my head against the glass. I had been sick for a long time, not the headaches and the vomiting, but the stillness, and the nausea that is worse because it makes no sense. I hadn’t had a drink since January. I hadn’t seen a doctor because I didn’t want to look at my healthcare and deal with all that shit. I’d probably lost 5kg, 10lbs or whatever the fuck it is. He’d ask me why later, and I would tell him I just wasn’t hungry, and I wasn’t. I didn’t really feel alive.

The Carmen fields are beautiful in March; I trail my fingers over their soft, purple grass heads as I walk. It’s cold, and the wind is sharp, but my sweater is still around my waist.

I spent a year in Paestum, Italy, when I was sixteen. I spent every day in the open fields, just walking, or riding a pushbike. I didn’t even know it was cold most of the time, the wind shot straight off my skin. Whenever I look back on it, I feel as though I was only half there. It’s like watching a film clip where the only sound you can hear is the faint whistling of the wind over empty hills. This was what the sickness felt like; only I wasn’t looking back on anything. It wasn’t a memory because it was still the present. That was the best I could explain it.

I’m leaving London soon, leaving the British Isles, away, away from computer screens and televisions and air-conditioning vents. I get sick of things too quickly. It’s not just that people say I do, it’s because in my head I know I hate things staying the same. And that would be fine if I didn’t want to go away all the time and leave everything behind.

Hello there.

Popping in to give you a much-deserved review after longer than a decade's wait.

First off, I'm curious if you ever did something else with this, as I'm interested in just knowing more about these characters. There are a lot of tangents put in this story, short as it may be, and it does make me want to read other stories about Georgia and even Lee. I wonder how old she is now, and what brought her to Italy at only sixteen, and that's not a good idea to never see a doctor, as I'd at least rather know what was wrong with me.

Continuing on, I think that I'd almost rather have some more dialogue or less exposition in this as there's almost too much information for barely five paragraphs. Maybe have less explaining the disease she has to the reader and instead go into the future to her arrival, and then showing how much medicine she has to take and such.

One issue I kind of have with this although I think this has a decent set voice, there's too much addressing the reader in a way that only a narrator could say. In this time, though, this is a character that's only supposed to know who they are and such, so I keep getting put-off by the more-direct lines.

Finally, I do find this interesting enough to at least want hints instead of all-furled out explanations on her disease. Even if that seems morbid.

Overall, I think that this is a decent idea for a novel, over a short story, as it seems like a lot of things could happen. Maybe her going to a hospital, or telling her friend of what she's been going through. I wish there was more.

That's all I've got, for now.

I like it. Is that it, or will it continue?

You portrayed the main character very well. She was very well developed. Dose Lee play guitar? Is that why his fingernails are long (I just guessed that because of your avatar of Slash)?

Very well written. I hope to see more.