"The Truth Behind the Window" is a short-story about a woman that spends her free time spying on her neighbors through a window. She is unhappy with her current lot in life: an emotionally abusive, yuppie husband, neighbors that she has disdain for, and generally feeling that the neighborhood around her is like a plastic dollhouse of pseudo-perfection.
There are many elements in the story that work. The authors use of questions is spot-on and are used in various effective ways. This includes making the reader search for his/her own answer to the question, as well as insight to what is important for her. They also heighten emotional appeal and give the strongest narrative voice in the entire piece. Another element of the story that is used extremely effectively is the use of time of day. She uses night as a time of illumination, where the houses have to show more because the sun is no longer there to veil what goes on inside. This inversion of the standard use of night and day was refreshing and effective.
That being said, there were elements that could also use more work. One element that really weakened the piece as a whole was the narrative voice. For me, it seemed to take a while to appear at all. The first scene never really dwelled on the implications of any of the actions going on and seemed more like a series of observations made without any really voice in the observations. Another thing that could use improvement is the use of paragraph to highlight particular events and help to illuminate moments of voice that were drowned by the language around it. In particular, there were moments where the author could have treated Janelle's thoughts like regular dialogue and started a new paragraph with them. Finally, another area that needs improvement is that the character needs to show us more and tell us less, especially in interactions with her husband.
No comments:
Post a Comment