Good writers are supposed to create the plot through action and not explain it, so he fails here. And she speaks, not in her own voice, but in the voice of the narrator, as if the narrator is saying "See Reader? This here's the BACKSTORY, and the only way I can figure out how to communicate it is by having Julia's mother basically just blather on about the whole thing in monologue." After the mother relates this, she pretty much disappears from the novel, because the only reason she was in the book in the first place was to act as freakin' Greek Chorus. First device: relying on long (and I mean REALLY loonnnggg) monologue soliloquy to give backstory-he has Julia's mother gas on and on about her husband. Throughout the novel, he relies on some extremely hackneyed devices that, with just a little effort, could have melted away into masterful writing. There is a beautiful love story in the center of the book, but it comes to an extremely trite conclusion. God, this could have been SO good! I wish Sendker's writing abilities matched his imagination, because this would have been an awesome book.
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