Post by sturgeon on May 29, 2022 9:45:47 GMT
We all lead double lives.
We wear a hard-hewn social mask that allows us to feel a sense of belonging at work while using words like "learnings" and "synergise" - that smiles for us through our Instagram holiday pics and when we're boasting about how special our children are - that pretends the importance of mortgages and careers.
Meanwhile, secretly, we hide our nihilistic, fucking, fighting, disgusting animal selves.
The protag of this cap also leads a double life, but not in the metaphorical sense alluded to above - instead, a more literal sense. She is a mild-mannered art teacher in America, and simultaneously a polygamous tribal chief in Cameroon.
An intriguing concept, to be sure, and I was ready to love this cap - but two things hold me back from recommending investment:
1. The whole thing felt arbitrary. Gemma seems to have had no connection to her double life beyond some childhood dreams and one mask in an art lesson decades later. I wasn't convinced that she would be so deeply affected and compelled to investigate. Moreover, we find out so little about her tribal doppelgänger, except that he inexplicably dies when she comes too close (not when she sees him, mind you, nor even when she lands in the same country, but when she's a certain mysterious distance away over the ocean). "You unknowingly ran into some kind of cosmic law," says Lillian. Call that an explanation? That's the most wishy-washy authorial shrug-off I've ever seen.
2. The timings are a little confusing: Gemma lands in Douala - then, it was not immediately obvious to me, the next section goes back in time. We see the run-up to the flight, and then we get a section where confusingly we return to the beginning of the flight and skip over the bit we saw before to go straight into travelling to Edea. Mixed in with this are flashbacks to memories of a dream she had as a child, woven in with impressions of her second-life she is having as an adult. Ultimately: timings/scene progressions could have been handled more cleanly.
While I'm in full crit mode, there's the occasional grammatical oddity/error. Here are some I noted, in case it helps the VC with her next polish:
"Though her health insurance... not really helping her." The nuggets of meaning in these sentences run-on in an uncomfortable way.
"Jet lag would set in any second" - jet lag doesn't happen with a snap of the fingers, surely it's more gradual and pervasive than that?
"She literary staggered" - literally (which is a redundant word anyway).
"so if you can't stay all right, that's all right." All right all right?
A few missing commas eg "Gemma, frightened and almost speechless, arrived" and "Tragic, but how could you possibly know?"
Je suis complet. C'est pas ma tasse de thé.
We wear a hard-hewn social mask that allows us to feel a sense of belonging at work while using words like "learnings" and "synergise" - that smiles for us through our Instagram holiday pics and when we're boasting about how special our children are - that pretends the importance of mortgages and careers.
Meanwhile, secretly, we hide our nihilistic, fucking, fighting, disgusting animal selves.
The protag of this cap also leads a double life, but not in the metaphorical sense alluded to above - instead, a more literal sense. She is a mild-mannered art teacher in America, and simultaneously a polygamous tribal chief in Cameroon.
An intriguing concept, to be sure, and I was ready to love this cap - but two things hold me back from recommending investment:
1. The whole thing felt arbitrary. Gemma seems to have had no connection to her double life beyond some childhood dreams and one mask in an art lesson decades later. I wasn't convinced that she would be so deeply affected and compelled to investigate. Moreover, we find out so little about her tribal doppelgänger, except that he inexplicably dies when she comes too close (not when she sees him, mind you, nor even when she lands in the same country, but when she's a certain mysterious distance away over the ocean). "You unknowingly ran into some kind of cosmic law," says Lillian. Call that an explanation? That's the most wishy-washy authorial shrug-off I've ever seen.
2. The timings are a little confusing: Gemma lands in Douala - then, it was not immediately obvious to me, the next section goes back in time. We see the run-up to the flight, and then we get a section where confusingly we return to the beginning of the flight and skip over the bit we saw before to go straight into travelling to Edea. Mixed in with this are flashbacks to memories of a dream she had as a child, woven in with impressions of her second-life she is having as an adult. Ultimately: timings/scene progressions could have been handled more cleanly.
While I'm in full crit mode, there's the occasional grammatical oddity/error. Here are some I noted, in case it helps the VC with her next polish:
"Though her health insurance... not really helping her." The nuggets of meaning in these sentences run-on in an uncomfortable way.
"Jet lag would set in any second" - jet lag doesn't happen with a snap of the fingers, surely it's more gradual and pervasive than that?
"She literary staggered" - literally (which is a redundant word anyway).
"so if you can't stay all right, that's all right." All right all right?
A few missing commas eg "Gemma, frightened and almost speechless, arrived" and "Tragic, but how could you possibly know?"
Je suis complet. C'est pas ma tasse de thé.
