Problem 3: The Sibling Rivalry

By definition, there should be competition in rivalry. In this story, I don't know what the sisters are competing for. Except maybe to see who will be the main character of this novel.

Forgetting for now that I don't know why we have to read this story from two points of view, we, the readers, are faced with Angela and Bev—two sisters with opposing opinions on how to care for an ailing mother, teenage children, and oneself. But the sisters aren't really all that different. And not in a "praise the day, we've discovered deep down we so much a like and now we can really get along" sense. No, they're practically the same person because you just didn't write them all that differently. Sure, one has an office job and a husband and a son to whom she can't relate. The other has no job and a mouthy daughter and a certainty her mother will make a miraculous comeback. But Angela and Bev are the same person. They're both immature. They both love Angela's husband for unexplained reasons. They both are bad parents. I'm not rooting for either one.

So now what? This isn't a very constructive post. I'm sorry. You've given us two main characters who are basically the same person. Which makes it even more annoying to read everything twice. Maybe one should be more resourceful. Maybe one should actually DO something.

Problem 2: The Stroke Victim

What are the most stressful things that occur in a person's life? Death, divorce, moving... Angela seems to have it all. Oh, wait. Her mother hasn't died yet. For some reason—we never get a sense of why beyond the usual "she didn't love me enough"—Angela wants her mother to die. The old woman had a stroke and is gone according to Angela. At one point, Angela contemplates putting a pillow over the old woman's face. Yeah, nice daughter.

So... When did the old woman have her stroke? Was it last week? Was it ten years ago? We have no idea how long Bev, the younger sister, has been changing diapers and spoon feeding her mom in the spare bedroom. Why is Angela convinced her mom needs to be put out to pasture?

I'm not usually a fan of medical stories, but this was killing me. I'm half way through the book and I still know NOTHING about Mama except that she lies in bed and stares at a picture of Jesus that hangs on the "sick room" wall. When did she have her stroke? What caused it? How old is this woman? Her children are hovering around 35. Doesn't that mean she's like maybe 60? That's really young. There are no clues to what her health was like before or if she was really old when she finally kids. All we hear—too close to the end—is that Mama was much more beautiful than her older sister who comes to visit. We also hear that Mama has long white hair. Every woman I know who's close to 60 dyes her hair. How long has she been in this state?

The only thing more infuriating than the lack of details about when the stroke happened and who found her body and how long she was in the hospital before she came back home is how the characters address the current situation. Angela and Bev discuss what to do the way two people might talk about a leaky faucet. "I think we should call a plumber." "I think I can handle it on my own." "Whatever. I have to go to work." "Fine. I'll just stay here and try to fix it. Don't mind me." The faucet continues to leak. The end.

You treat Mama like a set piece. She has all the back story and humanity of a porcelain sink. Bev saw her smile once? I don't care. Give me more of a reason to be in either Bev or Angela's corner. Seriously, their mother is lying in a vegetative state, they need to figure out what they're going to do, and I just don't care. This is definitely a problem.

Problem 1: The Divorce

Because I said in the original post that I wanted to help other people if possible, I will address why your novel sucks one point at a time. First up, your plot. Yes, you have a lot of things going on here, but that doesn't make it a rich story. Explaining why your plot is so weak will take several posts.

The story seems like it is supposed to be about a woman who decides to move in with her ailing mother, kooky sister and surly niece after her husband refuses to talk to her about an affair he may or may not be having. The novel opens with the subplot of a mismatched bratty couple for whom the woman is acting as wedding coordinator.

Is this a comedy? With all you boast about on the back cover (another entry here all together), I thought this was supposed to be a drama. I mean, you did file it under "literature," so I'm a bit confused as to why your characters never address the very real problems with which you've presented them.

The first real problem Angela, who may or may not be the main character (it's kind of a weak ensemble cast), faces is that her husband has decided to meet up with another woman. And he doesn't tell her about it. And when she confronts him (kind of), he doesn't want to talk about it.

All of a sudden she's getting a divorce. We learn about the ONE conversation where he doesn't want to talk in a flashback. Forgetting for now that this flashback comes while she's apartment hunting (so she's still living with the guy after that ONE conversation where nothing is said), I have to say that I have no sympathy for your main character whatsoever.

Angela reads a letter that says, "I'll be just as giddy as you," or some nonsense and all of sudden the marriage is over. She's gone snooping through her husband's things, found a letter, reads it out of context, and then does nothing but brood until her husband comes home. Rather than build up what a terrible day that was for Angela—how agonizing that wait is, how much it kills her to think that her husband is even talking to this woman, all the reasons why she hates this mystery woman—we see her day pass quickly and get some lame back story about the other woman. (The title character! Again, an entry for another day...) Her husband comes home at 3 a.m. and she broods and expects him to read her mind. When he doesn't, she decides things are over. Your main character behaves in exactly the way you've always told me I should not. That I should loathe women who expect men to be mind readers. So, maybe it's just me? No, you didn't create a sympathetic main character. This woman should be going to dark and ugly places mentally if she has almost 24 hours to contemplate what her husband is up to and WHY he's doing it.

Yeah, you skipped the why.

Your attempts to keep Angela nice and to create a sympathetic character in the husband, telling us about how Miss Nevada (the other woman) played with his heart in high school, does not help us understand Angela, hate Miss Nevada, or care at all whether or not this marriage will work out. If anything, this event—finding the letter, coming back at 3 a.m. from a trade show that ended at 9 a.m.—only helps us think that this marriage has been dead for quite some time but you, the author, are not going to pull the plug on it. Instead you're going to have them get together in the end. And rather than work really hard to make that happen and be believable, you're just going to make Angela and her husband kind of wishy-washy and seemingly in need of good heart-to-heart.

Oh my God! There are another 450-something pages still left in this book. Now what? Do they ever talk? NO! They don't. Not even on page 494! Other people tell Angela to talk to her husband. (long pause) And that's it? That's all that happens? We don't even know why Angela decided she needed to leave. Why is she leaving? If her husband was unfaithful, why is SHE moving out? Shouldn't she be packing his bags? No, because then she would be DOING something. And your characters don't DO anything. Waiting for your husband to call apologize is not doing anything. We don't even get to experience the anguish of waiting for that phone to ring. We don't get to sit in her office with her and have her get excited that each and every jangle might be the sound of her husband and their relationship coming back to her.

Obviously, this major problem is just a weak plot device to put the two sisters together under one roof. Couldn't you have just had mold growing in the walls of her condo or a neighbor with a construction project she's decided is simply too noisy? Did Angela need to be married at all? No one ever talks to her husband. He'd be really easy to delete from the story.

My suggestion for making your first "problem" better: Either have Angela fly off the handle and very suddenly move into her mother's house (why is she taking the time to apartment hunt?) in a fit of rage that causes her to become incredibly embarrassed—so much so that she remains living at her mother's house to prove that she was right even though she knows she wasn't. Or have Angela be a spinster who suddenly moves in because she can't stand what's happening at her own residence. Some minute problem that demonstrates how vain she is. And if you take the first suggestion, please address the problem of divorce. Who gets the house, the kid, the dog, the car, etc.?

Done

I have finished your novel. I don't think I've ever read an entire novel in one week. But, come on, let's be honest. You didn't really write a novel. The copy I have—the one where Lulu seems to have simply shrunk your Word manuscript to fit the width of its paperback trim size—is 494 pages. However, I think there are only 100 pages of story. I mean, a bulk of the writing is the dialogue. Lots of short lines and hard returns, all double-spaced. Your first main character experiences potentially traumatic events, and then all of a sudden we start reading about the SAME EXACT events again from her younger sister's point of view. You repeat half the content! I've never finished a book and felt like I could quickly outline the entire story. But after reading about everything TWICE, I certainly felt that way about your story.

I went into this thinking Angela, the older sister, was the main character. Why am I reading about anything from her little sister's point of view? I can only surmise from the way you write Angela that you didn't really like her. Rather than scrap her as the main character, you just started retelling the story from Bev's point of view. But if you don't like Angela, how is anyone going to get through all those Angela chapters to get to Bev? And even if they do, Bev isn't really that likable either.

You boast on the back cover that this book will teach readers how to love. Supposing that you had carefully crafted the differences between what Angela sees and what Bev sees and the miscommunication between the two, you could have beautifully illustrated how to open one's heart and love another. But instead you've created a repetitious story about two sisters who are practically the same character. Seriously. This far into your career as a writer? You shouldn't be afraid to throw caution to the wind and start over when something stinks.

There you go. I finished your novel three days ago and my overwhelming reaction to this book is still "I hate the format" and "I hate your main characters."

A Life Wasted

I've been waiting most of my life to read my mom's novel about a woman who moves in with her mother and sister after discovering that her husband is cheating on her. My parents separated for a short time when I was about 8 years old because my mom believed my dad was cheating on her. But my connection to this novel doesn't stop there. No, my mom would ask me to take 3-mile walks with her. Hours of my life have been devoted to listening to her rave about her own writing and moan about how no one had discovered her yet. If the average person spends one-third of his life sleeping, then my guess is I spent at least a fifth of my childhood listening to my mom talk about her writing.

I believe I was about 12 years old when my mom started telling me about this novel. Eighteen years later I'm still wondering why she thought "puked a river of possum guts" was such a brilliant thing to say.

Yeah.

Seriously. She thinks that's awesome.

So, I got my copy of the novel finally. She self-published on Lulu. I'm about 250 pages into it, and I had to start this blog. Obviously she will never listen to me when I tell her that her novel blows. She firmly believes she is a real writer. A REAL writer. She doesn't want to hear that her writing is "good" or that you liked it. She wants you to get passionate. But I can't lie. But I also can't ask her, "You really think this is good?" It's just too late for her to get a new career.

Why the blog? She will never listen to me, but I have to get this off my chest. There's so much to say. And hopefully someone else can be amused by my rants or avoid a disastrous novel of his own or maybe just be inspired to tell a real writer he knows that she really can't count on making a living as a writer. Or maybe no one will read this. And that's fine, too.