This little story was a completely random find.... I googled "short story", clicked the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, and then hit the random story button on the eastofweb website. It's definitely a first person account, though I don't know exactly what genre it would go into. The main reason for my hanging on in this story and finishing it is the want to figure out what she did on those Thursday nights. I took a guess early on, and was waaaay off. Basically, for a swift recap, the main character is a cleaner everyday but Thursday, in her mind. She has a simple life that goes on undeterred, even with the happenings with her relative on Thursday (and oh, she likes shoes a lot... just not in quite the same way as the stereotypical shoe lover does). The writer is good at painting a picture, but doesn't quite tell me as much as I wanted about why she is so damn fascinated with shoes, or whether her hubby actually knows exactly what she does. Because I don't get this information, it's hard to decide whether this woman is moral or not, and, therefore, whether I like her all that much. I would recommend this to no one in particular, possible people that like slow reveals in stories, or for those that are interested in what... er... happens later on.
Link: http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ChooShoe.shtml
That should bring you straight there.
As I read this story, I felt like I was floating just above the surface of what was going on; like the author's explanations were just barely on the cusp of making sense, but she didn't quite take it there. For me, the level of vagueness in this story was too high, and instead of drawing me in and making me want to continue reading, it came off as kind of annoying. The initial picture of the main character seemed to be building up to a good character description in the beginning, but like the rest of the story, it didn't get there. There is potential for a rich, exciting storyline here, but it is too cloudy and circumvented to be enthralling.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Brit's comment I have to say I agree. I had no idea where the story was going and totally felt like I was blind sided by what the story turned out to be. I was alright with it at first but eventually, when the main character started to use rather offensive language, I felt is was just a meager attempt by the author to have a sort of shock and awe affect on the reader. It was also very hard for me to enjoy the story because of how much I disliked both the main character and her husband. I feel like the protagonist’s lifestyle was rather pathetic and even more so was the husbands. However, it was a well written story that had an interesting first half and intro with the talk about the characters like for shoes. I also liked how the author used shoes to show how the protagonist picked what people she spent her life with and what she thought about them.
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