Reviews for The Night Anna's Husband Told Her About Beauty

Reviews For: The Night Anna's Husband Told Her About Beauty - Reviews: Page 1 of 2

Jestry 2008-08-22 ch 1,	abuseWow. That's a really interesting analogy. I liked it.
Efreisone 2008-08-08 ch 1,	abuseThis was wonderful. It's hard to tell a good story in a one-shot, but really, I can see this in an anthology. It's a rare gem to find on fictionpress. (A surprise, you might say! Haha. Ha. Ok, sorry.) The description of the rose, in particular, is excellent. And I like that any surprise, good or bad, is considered beautiful by the husband. The only thing that I don't understand is the pearls. They're brought up a few times, so they're probably meant to be significant, but do they simply point out that the wife isn't absorbed in her husband's speech? Or are they symbolic of something that I'm just not seeing? Or am I just reading too much into this?
Boo 2008-03-09 ch 1, anon.	abusewow...frankly speaking I thought it would be a husband who will kill his wife. Kind of cut her or something like he described the peeling the petals stuff. My thoughts are sick:) well, two crazy people are worth each other, what can be said about that?:)
SirScott 2007-12-05 ch 1,	abuseThat was a surprise. I figured the husband would shoot the wife. ~SirScott
Twilight Starr 2007-12-05 ch 1,	abuseGreat story. I like how she says 'surprise' and he remarks 'how beautiful'. Nice work. I haven't seen a story quite like it. ~Twilight Starr~
hopelessromanticfool 2007-11-19 ch 1, anon.	abusei like this one too... :)
OneGirlAlone 2007-10-19 ch 1, anon.	abuseThat was wonderful! This story perfectly demonstrated "true beauty". :)
Ayenti Hwann 2007-09-26 ch 1,	abuseThis story is wonderfully detailed, and reads beautifully. It's really amazingly good.
the rocket apple 2007-05-06 ch 1,	abuseamazing! I love it.
Louise 2006-08-18 ch 1, anon.	abuse...that left me tense... The whole time I'm thinking "he's going to kill her..." Very well written. I think the end could be more abrupt. But maybe that's just me. It reminds me a lot of Katherine Mansfield short stories which tend to have a sort of twist at the end that leave you gasping for breath. I really like that you left them anonymous as 'wife' and 'husband'. And I feel that there's a story behind her grandparents too..like why she didn't like her granfather as much and why he kept the gun in the bible? Haha, then again I could just be reading too much into it. I hear in America everyone has a gun. Anyway, point is, I like it, well done.=)
Spork Sisters 2006-06-26 ch 1,	abusebeautiful. Fantastic situational irony. I love it. Strangely enough, I think that at some points there's almost too much description. I dunno. It's probably just a difference in the way we think. You have a writing style that draws readers into detail, setting, and complex emotions. I have a writing style that draws readers in to the characters and their individual voices. I've always found that I have little patience for description. I prefer to create the atmosphere and the characters' appearances in the things I read on my own terms. I often find myself skipping over the paragraphs or sentences that go more in depth about the surroundings. As a result, my writing rarely includes specific details. The challenge is finding the right balance. At what point do the details become tedious to read? At what point do your readers fill in too many details or not enough? You do a fabulous job of catching the moment. It's detailed, it's specific, and I feel like I'm really there. I can see the light from the orange lamp shade, I can smell the gas that still clings to its musty old fabric. I can imagine the thin weave of the tired old cloth. But your story is just that, I think. A moment. A picture. It catches a picture. It describes and elaborates, tending to every important detail and then some that aren't so important. Then it catches another picture. It's beautifully done, but it inhibits the flow of the story and takes away from what little characterization you did put in there. I feel like I'm left asking too many important questions. Why does Anna shoot him? And I don't mean within the context. What makes her capable of doing something like that? What happened in her past that poisoned her sanity or her heart enough to create such a fragile temperment? I don't know. There aren't even enough hints to draw any reasonable conclusions, to make an educated guess. I'm not saying that it's always a bad thing to leave a reader wondering, to leave them to fill in details. I'm saying that you can't leave them to fill in details on your characters unless you're intentionally avoiding specific details until a later point in the piece. When you write, I get the impression that you constantly ask yourself "What?" and "Where?" (Where are they? What are they doing? What does his expression look like? Where is the couch they're sitting on?). When I write I ask myself "Why?" (Why is he upset? Why did she run? Why does he avoid her?) So I guess we both have some work to do, huh? But hey, who knows? We could both be dead wrong. ~Fork~ (and thanks for the review. we so rarely get serious reviews that do more than just say "OMG! OMG! OMG! I love it!" It's refreshing to get some real criticism and some good advice.)
swimchickslam 2006-05-02 ch 1,	abusewow...
Written 2006-04-07 ch 1,	abuseAwesome writing. The man seems to have a knowledge of what beauty is to him, but it almost seems superficial in and of itself. Once you've found it's last surprise, is it beautiful afterwards? Or does something need to keep surprising to be beautiful? After all, if he'd found soem other surprise to her, would he have thought her forever truly beautiful, or would he have expected more afterwards? An interesting definition nonetheless. The idea of beauty being a . . . a moment. . . seems to remind me of poetry. the way sometimes, when it focuses on a small instant, it is most beautiful for the ending. I'm sorry I'm rambling and not making sense, I really am. Stunning end. I love the bits and pieces that seem sort of random and tie the story together.
Amaya Windsong 2006-03-19 ch 1,	abusewow. this is beautiful. truly. the description of the rose was amazing. you are a great writer. :)
Nova-Janna 2006-03-17 ch 1,	abuseOh, I'm so glad I finally got around to reading this so I could leave another too-long review. This is brilliant. This is why I read short stories, this is why I write them. It is well written and descriptive in the little ways, which we often forget -'She wonders briefly if he even noticed her new pearl earrings.' -and despite the fact that you do not know the characters you do.At the same time, I think the husband is a bit of a psycho. Which seems shallow, it just seems to me that if he needed her to kill him for him to find true beauty in her he was taking her for granted and not looking hard enough.Which is not a criticism - it is merely my opinion and perspective on the character. This is going on my favorites list - brilliant job.

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