Post by sturgeon on May 15, 2021 16:35:40 GMT
Well this capital here's as light and fluffy as an iron maiden. Robbery, murder, trauma, murder, rape, domestic violence and murder. It brought to mind the early Coen Brothers film Blood Simple, but with the looming religious portent of A Serious Man.
Told with multiple points of view, two brothers turn up at the house of a granddad and granddaughter - apparently strangers, though they end up casually sharing deep personal traumas. (Really, why did Joe feel the need to volunteer the information that he raped his mother?) A bloodbath ensues. Literally, since the house floods.
I was drawn in by the gradual revelations and the premonition of doom, but it bothered me that I never really understood the relationship between the brothers and the occupants of the house. Perhaps I missed something, but I ended up just assuming that the grandfather had intended to hire them as killers. Anyway, it never became clear to me.
By the end of the story, I was on the fence; but in the end the flatness of the characters pushes me towards a no. They had backstories, but not with enough texture and specificity to give them much of a third dimension.
So, I vote no.
(Also, there were quite a few minor grammatical errors like missing commas, yellow-light instead of yellow light, bare instead of bear, Babtist instead of Baptist, vanished instead of varnished, the Lord with punish instead of will punish, w˝ˇˇˇ
ooden, form the sun instead of from the sun, etc.)
Told with multiple points of view, two brothers turn up at the house of a granddad and granddaughter - apparently strangers, though they end up casually sharing deep personal traumas. (Really, why did Joe feel the need to volunteer the information that he raped his mother?) A bloodbath ensues. Literally, since the house floods.
I was drawn in by the gradual revelations and the premonition of doom, but it bothered me that I never really understood the relationship between the brothers and the occupants of the house. Perhaps I missed something, but I ended up just assuming that the grandfather had intended to hire them as killers. Anyway, it never became clear to me.
By the end of the story, I was on the fence; but in the end the flatness of the characters pushes me towards a no. They had backstories, but not with enough texture and specificity to give them much of a third dimension.
So, I vote no.
(Also, there were quite a few minor grammatical errors like missing commas, yellow-light instead of yellow light, bare instead of bear, Babtist instead of Baptist, vanished instead of varnished, the Lord with punish instead of will punish, w˝ˇˇˇ
ooden, form the sun instead of from the sun, etc.)
