Reviewerâs Name: Robert Rampersaud
Title of Piece: Whatever Happened to______? Authorâs Name: Anonymous
Enjoyed:
Plot:
I like how the beginning it threw off the reader by talking about Anonymous in the car ride which made it seem like a biography about Anonymous.
Characters:
Anonymous shows how determine she was bringing a woman writer, a wife and a mother by working on her third book after taking her daughter to swim team, after school and after work.
Voice & Style:
Anonymous gives a great visual and clear example of the way she described her husband aggression by saying âYou canât control a person who has come home in the human embodiment of a loaded gunâ.
Point of View:
Anonymous described the way her husband has a hard time dealing with the âside of the continuum of masculinityâ which gave a great understanding of why he was so abusive against her.
Questions:
Characters:
As a woman writer and your husband also being a writer, do you think he was jealous because you sold more than 20,000 copies to his 2 to 6 individual copies which led him to be abusive against you?
Dialogue:
Do you think the reason you lost the case against your husband was because the photo of you âwith a glass of white wine, standing politely at a book launch and supporting other authorsâ caused the judged to feel jealous of you being a successful writer?
Voice & Style:
You described womenâs voice need to speak up, but its there a reason why you wanted to stay Anonymous even with the trial being over? I believe you showing other women that you are not afraid of the critiques would make other women comfortable voicing their views.
Characters:
Your daughter has seen your ex-husband anger and even was involved running away from your husband. How is she able to deal with not having a father figure in her life or is he part of her life?
Hi Robert,
I like your critique of the piece’s voice and style; i agree with you the author did a great job delivering their message through metaphors such as the “loaded gun”. About your questions, I Think the piece with all the details you stated in the questions such as the wine glass picture and being more successful than the ex husband are all adding up and there is no specific reason why the husband was abusive or why the judge was not fair, instead, I think that question is for us to answer after reading her piece and many other stories like her. I think the questions are missing the bigger picture of many people finding anything to blame the author for and not holding the ex husband accountable.
The author’s voice and style was something I also found to be really good. I didn’t bring it up in my own piece but the way she describes her husband as basically a walking disaster entering the home was amazing. Throughout the story she not only manages to describe scenes, but also throw jabs at the people she’s talking about and express her own view.