Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.
Here’s mine:
Kate stretched out her arms, as Alex removed her coat in a manner that struck Jack as vaguely seductive. As the coat slipped off, Kate looked to Jack like a beardless Christ with a good body. He didn’t know whether to be horrified or turned on.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I came, I saw, I’ve posted.
That’s pretty nifty, E.
Make’s me cringe to do this, but what the hell. No excuses, no disclaimers.
Here’s mine:
“Oh,” I said. I thought I’d quit.
It was difficult to disagree with her. The Hunt for Red October was living the vagabond’s life in Costa Rica while studiously avoiding alimony payments. From her vantage point, he was a runaway from duty and good sense. But on the Osa, Hunt was part of the live-and-let-live atmosphere, a kooky ex-pat specimen in a landscape that is littered with them. Americans think of immigration as a one-way road heading from south to north. But there’s a lot of traffic in the other direction as well, the tired and worn out all looking for permissive, frontier towns that will let a man live cheaply, evade responsibility and camp out in an ambulance on a pristine beach. The John Hunts of the world are free to live on their terms on the Osa. The police are unlikely to bother him. Nor are Hunt’s fellow settlers, many of whom are up to some unregulated enterprise of their own.
“PFFFT. This guy doesn’t talks much does he?” (He was practicing his new Scandemerican accent). I shook my head very slightly, took aim at the pelican and threw. The fucking thing wouldn’t move.
Suprise, suprise – mine has the F word in it.
Here’s mine:
He thought about it for a moment, and she could see, in that transparent way of children, how he was working hard to pull himself together. He knew now that she couldn’t save him, that she was useless—even worse than useless. She was somebody that he had to work to save, to allow her her little delusions that things were going to be all right. She saw it in his eyes, that he had resolutely decided to go along with the cheerful tone. He kept hold of her thumb and ran his hand in circles around it, just like where a ring would go. Then he swallowed—that swallow nearly killed her—and said in the bravest voice he had, “Well, are you going to stay here with me until I have to go on the airplane?”