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Biography of an Everyday Couple

ISBN 978-1-54394-021-3

 

Here is some of the judge’s commentary:

Beautiful start with an engaging description of Alice, followed by descriptions that slowly unfurl her mobility and pain issues. We get to feel it in her movements; we get better acquainted through her inner dialogue about her surgeries – a collection of narrative smarts gives us the layers of Alice. Very well done and vastly more effective than if she had been described generally in the narrative without any sense of movement, pain, fatigue and other experientials. Well done.

 

We’re hooked into Alice, and to the kindness of her husband in letting her rest while he took care of the morning routine. We get some intrigue in Alice’s abilities, such as being able to predict the gender of a baby or knowing when someone is about to die. Reader feels those two abilities profoundly. Author writes with a conversational, pleasant voice, and has structured the story to flow naturally from point to interest to a well-paced next point of interest. I never felt the story rushing, nor a lull in the middle danger zone of a narrative-based story.

 

The judge relates to the “popcorn for everyone” scene with my dad as well as the characters.

 

Dialogue is well-written with speakers identified and voice differentiated well, alternating between simple dialogue lines and those with movement, gestures, description and inner voice. Author deftly uses both forms in dialogue sections energized by her choices. The ‘popcorn for everyone’ scene broke my heart into pieces, as that stomach-sinking moment of ‘something is very wrong’ lives forever in the memories of those who have been there. Author did well to keep this scene simple and thus more gripping. Author’s great skill lies in not over-doing descriptions of messages. Such instinct comes from a deep caring for the subjects. Well done

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