From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   On Friday, August 1, 2014 4:58:33 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:   
   > In article ,   
   >    
   > William Vetter   wrote:   
   >    
   > >Because there isn't much activity here, except ugly activity, I'm gonna   
   >    
   > >post something that isn't so important....   
   >    
   > >   
   >    
   > >I finished reading this book.  The plot structure was a buildup to a   
   >    
   > >revelation.  There were two women, the title character, Virginia, and a   
   >    
   > >cousin of hers that she was close to as a child, and about 4 older women   
   >    
   > >who were their female relatives, 2 of which were elderly and confused.    
   >    
   > >This structure was very obscured by the whole thing being written in   
   >    
   > >stream of consciousness and shifting viewpoints between all of these   
   >    
   > >characters.  Unfortunately, the author chose to name two secondary   
   >    
   > >characters that were involved in the 2 confused viewpoint characters Roy   
   >    
   > >and Ray, which made parts of the narrative awful to sort out.   
   >    
   > >   
   >    
   > >Virginia visits her home town while she's pregnant, develops toxemia,   
   >    
   > >and collapses in her second aunt's house, who is the mother of her   
   >    
   > >childhood friend.    She is out of it, and is advised not to be moved   
   >    
   > >much, so all of the female characters come there to tend to her, and   
   >    
   > >eventually there is the revelation that one of the grandfathers,   
   >    
   > >Raymond, developed a mental illness during the last decade of his life.   
   >    
   > >   
   >    
   > >He was fascinated by King Tut and the Pyramids, and saw himself as a   
   >    
   > >Pharaoh, and had himself buried in a concrete vault with his television   
   >    
   > >and books about Egypt.  When he was alone with the girls, he terrorized   
   >    
   > >them, told them he'd kill them unless they worshiped him.  When his   
   >    
   > >burial arrangements were complete, he became abusive toward his wife,   
   >    
   > >who eventually killed him and made it look like a suicide.  Each of   
   >    
   > >these women has kept their aspect of the situation secret from the world   
   >    
   > >and each other, and in the climactic scene, they tell one another their   
   >    
   > >individual experiences, and how Raymond screwed up their lives.   
   >    
   > >   
   >    
   > >So that was the plot.   
   >    
   >    
   > Thank you for telling us about this.  I, for one, would probably   
   >    
   > have rejected it based on the back cover blurb, but it's always   
   >    
   > good to have more (but not too much) information.   
   >    
   The single excerpt about yellow interested me in the book.  I am glad that I   
   read a book of this type.  I do not heavily endorse it and recommend you all   
   read it.  It had some problems, which I mentioned or suggested above; the   
   denouement was weak, all    
   the women being instantly and completely healed by confessing to each other.    
   On the plus side, it was a women's novel where the characters' secrets   
   involved no sexual abuse, which startled me.   
      
   I respect an author who tries something difficult and partially succeeds;   
   maybe more than some name author who somewhat bores me with a uniform   
   product.  I don't mean that as career advise for anybody.   
   >    
   >    
   > But your point, I think, is that it's lousy plotting.     
      
   I don't have a position on the plot.  One of you ladies asked me what kind of   
   plot it had.  It's not a complex plot, was what I meant to convey.  As a raw   
   plot diagram, it could have been a short fiction plot.  Maybe a complex plot   
   would have made the    
   book unreadable, given the complexity of the style.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)