02-28-2018, 09:53 PM
This is lovely. I love the long lines. I love the rich and vivid details, especially “mist gassed me to sleep” and “held my breath for the crossing” (I used to do that too), and “clotted cream of Devon.”
I like how the narrator doesn’t have to tell us who is speaking for us to know, and how the whole thing is a whisper except the single line, “Keith, wake up ...”. It startles me every time I read that line because it is so loud compared to the rest.
The whole thing is a beautiful scene that makes me somehow feel nostalgia for a memory that isn’t mine.
The only place I stumbled was the first sentence. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me that you meant a five year gap in age, and not five years since they had last had to share a room. Perhaps “yet” instead of “and?”
I like how the narrator doesn’t have to tell us who is speaking for us to know, and how the whole thing is a whisper except the single line, “Keith, wake up ...”. It startles me every time I read that line because it is so loud compared to the rest.
The whole thing is a beautiful scene that makes me somehow feel nostalgia for a memory that isn’t mine.
The only place I stumbled was the first sentence. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me that you meant a five year gap in age, and not five years since they had last had to share a room. Perhaps “yet” instead of “and?”
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara