So I just read your entire story...and asdfghjkkl I'm flailing (;;)
You write beautifully and built suspense with every chapter. It was such an addicting read. It made me really emotional, and I about cried during the Noah-x-Michael scenes because NOAH NEEDS TO BE DOING ALL THOSE THINGS WITH THOMAS NOT MICHAEL ARGGH. But you made everything okay again in the ending, sooo yeah good. c:
Sadistic Bunny

I almost cried once. That was so lovely.

I loved this story so much, and I couldn't stop reading. I just couldn't put it down. It's great.

Oh my gosh. This is just so beautiful I felt like crying. The way you captured Thomas' emotions was simply amazing. I'm so glad Noah and Thomas got together in the end. So beautiful...

I wish I could leave a long, satisfying review, but I'm at aloss of words here. This was so beautiful and haunting that I don't know what to say.

The plot is just like a frame for the diffrent atomspheres that you make up with your wonderful, poetic wordings, but it's still so easy to understand; leaving me with my heart in my throat. And it's so visual. I can see everything; how the sun and the moon is shining through the window in the dorm room, how the wind is blowing around thier homes, Thom's hurt expressions and Noah's blank eyes, even though it's not written out. And I can hear the parents talking through thin walls, the clacking of a teacher's stylus against a dusty blackboard, the scraping of chairs, the buzz of conversation and the rustle of pages and the boys' breathing.

It's wonderful.

I love it.

I can't even describe why I love this so much but I do. It's absolutely brilliant.

"Once I knew a girl who kept her heart inside of a jam jar"-

this reminds me of a beautiful beautiful childrens book called 'the heart and the bottle' by Oliver Jeffers.

All this poetry of yours is just so beautiful

Suki

This is just a stellar piece of fiction. I am blown away. It is unreservedly among the top fiction put on FP. Let me enumerate the joys of your story.

The prose is a dream come true. It’s poetical in an unobtrusive and immaculate way. The only times it’s obtrusive, like the first chapter (prologue?) are accounted for (because it turns out that was the story written by the protagonist.) And, unlike much of the poetical prose I find here on FP, you haven’t sacrificed plotting or characterization for flights of lyrical exuberance. All of the beautiful wording returns to the central matters of the story.

The characterization, let me just say, is phenomenal. Noah is so clearly a himself, whoever that himself is. He isn’t a type, which is remarkable given how easily you could have typed him, and he is disturbingly opaque for much of the story. I thought for a long time that you simply didn’t know who he was, and the story was only about the protagonist’s relationship to the idea of Noah. But he really does have an identity, a personality, a breath. All of your characters breathe. Michael, at times, seemed like just a foil for the protagonist, but by the end I could see that you understood him too. And, of course, our hero himself (excuse me for forgetting the name) is a piece of work, full of human vulnerabilities and vacillations, and yet individual above his subjective status as interpreter for our world.

I also want to give you credit for your credible side-characters, especially Chris but all of them were good. A love triangle is one thing, but a whole social group is another, and you succeeded admirably in creating it.

The plotting is great, it kept me hanging and had me in tears by the end (embarrassingly, I was at the public library.) You completely evoke these feelings of forlorn not-enoughness, of the real pain of being left behind and the ultimate joy. The plot was very well thought-out and vivid, not merely a narration but a story.

Hum hum hum, what else. I really think it could use a better name. “The Haunting” is apt enough, but it’s vague and suggests an entirely different story to the idle reader. Something like “The Boy with Ghosts in his Mouth” even would be quite good. I don’t know if it’s possible to change the title at this point, but these are my thoughts.

Also: do you like Kenneth Slessor? I love Slessor but here in Canada no one’s heard of him, and when I meet any Australians they don’t care for poetry, so I have been deprived of an outlet for my adoration for nearly a year now. I hope you like him so we can talk about it, because I just want someone to fucking talk to about Kenneth fucking Slessor.

Oh, I'm enjoying reading this so so much! Your writing is simply beautiful, such a pleasure to read...thank you:) I can't wait to read more.

Suki

This is beautiful.

I love this line particularly- 'It was different now; I had more to lose, and as the days slipped onwards, my spine grew bowed with the weight of it.'

Suki.

I love your writing style. It made this story easier to read and more interesting.

Overall, the story so full of emotion and sweet, that I can smiled and frowned at times. Hope to read more from you soon )

I just finished this story and I have to say... wow... just wow. I love it and all its strange thoughts and -sometimes gentle sometimes not- awkwardness and how it makes you stop and go "huh?" at times. I think I may go read some of your other stories when I have time if you have any. Keep up the good work.

this is so good.

Oh god. Okay. I LOVED that. So much. Really.

I mean, the that it was written fit so well, at first I found it floaty, sort of surreal.

I cried through much of 'October' and 'November'. Like actual sobbing, the sleeves of my hoody were soaked.

Often, I read stuff on Fiction Press on my Ipod Touch at school, but I'm kinda glad I didn't read this because truthfully I cried that much I think I would have woried my friends or teachers if I just broke down in the middle of a lesson, or at lunch.

Not many stories hit me this hard. Congratulations on writing something so beautiful. And thank you too

I was going to leave an unsigned review because for whatever reason, I feel embarrassed writing reviews and admitting I wrote them, but they were disabled. So here I am, logged in and everything.

I was on the verge of tears this entire piece. It was so sad, so soulful, and even at the end I couldn't help but feel it was bittersweet. I loved the personification of everything. It seemed like every word had a purpose-Michael Harriet's name being written out the whole time, the painting, the little gestures, everything.

Your writing style is so pleasant. I was drawn in from the beginning. Thomas leaked in through every word and I felt like I knew everyone.

You had a typo or two in places, but I don't remember where. (Helpful...I know) And my only real complaint was that I felt like Timothy and (the other one...Jeremy?) were thrown in the back without any real character connection. Chris had his with the girl and the good-bye scene and Tim had his somewhat here and there, but I forget there's another roommate outside of the others.

On another note, I was so confused when I read ''October' and 'Spring' together and others of the like. Haha, I forgot that the calender stays the same and there's another hemisphere separate from my own. Apparently I'm a little more closed off than I thought.

Anyway, I think I'm going to go see your other stories. I do hope you keep writing. I really do love your writing style.