Published April 12, 2009
Everyone had to come over for the whole day, edging well into the night. It happened nearly every year, round about the same time, early April. Something about it being Easter (though Easter was a whole week from now). It was supposed to be a time when the family comes together. Some families are best kept far, far away from each other, and any well-meaning attempt to “bring the family together” is doomed to end in bitter bloodshed.
Maude Kennelway reflected on this as she headed to the kitchen to put out plates of food. This had to be done strategically and carefully. According to her calculations, there was a fifty to sixty percent chance Aunt Clover would be in one of her natural foods phases, in which she carefully studied the nutritional content of everything before it went near her mouth. And Uncle Morris would gobble up everything in his path, so it was best to space out his favourite foods along the table (beef stroganoff, fruit kebabs and peanuts-he consumed copious amounts of all three with astonishing alacrity). Maude dutifully placed the fruit kebabs on the opposite side of the table from the peanuts.
“Maude! Why don't you wear that lovely skirt-” came Mrs Kennelway's voice from the front porch.
“Mum, the last time I wore a skirt was November twenty-third. Two thousand and two. That wedding thing we had to go to, remember?” she probed
“It's just, relatives are coming, and...”
“I. Am. Not.” stated Maude, enunciating each word firmly and with, if not malice, steadfast obstinacy, “Wearing. A. Skirt” Maude gave the last word a special inflection designed to create the impression of disgust. She had an aversion to skirts, one that also extended to dresses, blouses, and jeans that weren't baggy.
Mrs Kennelway gave a sigh. Good, thought Maude. Threat averted. She poured a packet of chips into a bowl, screwed up the packet, and dumped it in the bin.
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140,280 Literary Works • 673,071 Reviews
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,
Okayy well this is an interesting paragraph to start us off here. It seems to be setting up the scene for some sort of awkward/disastrous or quite possibly both meetup for a family that appears to I suppose be important to driving this plot forward here. It does get your attention as a reader so as far as the starts go, this one is a pretty decent one so far.
Hmm...well it seems we've certainly got a bit of setup running here and this is all proceeding in the normal fashion a scenario like this tends to spread if maybe a little bit more exaggerated in a couple of places than it normally would be but given this is a story that makes enough sense and you haven't exaggerated it to the point that things become difficult to follow, it does in fact work this way.
Well that's an interesting point to end on there. Its a slightly different tone from the rest of this piece, well not quite, its just there's a very tiny hint of humor almost and we get to see a little bit of a clear personality there which is quite nice to see. At any rate, overall, this is a solid start here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
I think for me to comment more on this piece you have to continue it because though the introduction is good it isn't very powerful. The character of Maude does however come out well especially in the last paragraphs where she is portrayed as assertive. Good though but I have to read the continuation to comment more and one more thing:
'It happened nearly every year, round about the same time,'
It doesn't sound so grammatically correct to me, remove one word either 'round' or 'about'.
love, kemunto.