clare's crits of rhiannon, amber, bens short story

Night Time with Daddy
This one is a nostalgic story about a girl missing her dead father. Her mother doesn’t want to “live in the past” so the girl feels guilty about spending time at her father’s grave on his birthday. I wonder why the girl kept wanting to cry but wouldn’t? How old is this person? She has a daughter but her mother is still driving her around? She refers to him at father the whole story except the beginning and end, there is a discrepancy with the tone of daddy and father. “Daddy“ is more small child, and “father” has a more formal and mature tone.

Mama
A woman is on her deathbed, it is winter, and she is thinking of her mother who is already gone and how she didn’t like winter. I think this is supposed to be a foreshadowing of the woman’s upcoming death. The woman with cancer says she can’t take the pain any more, but you don’t see this pain in her voice, I think that struggle could be made more evident. I like the part where the woman (ruth/Olivia gets her first morphine drip and passes into a fully realized memory with her mother and winter. It’s like as much as her mom wants to protect her, she can’t, and now she still has to die. I think the story could use a focus, maybe one strong clear memory that runs throughout a few sort of formed flashbacks.

Checkers
I like the concept of this story, it has humor to it. I like how Ben led us into the story, I had a visual from a movie of zooming through the treetops, down the side walk, checking out picnics and dogs, passing a smiling guard, and stopping right at the checkers table. A voice over : 14yr old Timmy Lorenzo! CHECKERS CHAMP! and then a flashback to his childhood. Good set up. Throughout the story Ben provides good dialogue and action so we really get to know Timmy’s attitude. The only thing I’d change is the ending and how it’s all warm and fuzzy and reminds me of a fable. I’d prefer a bit of an unexpected twist that would maybe bring the old Timmy back to the surface. Maybe it’s just me.