ENG1141

Creative Writing

Formal Critique

Reviewer’s Name: Nickay Green      

 Title of Piece: The Wife’s story

Author’s Name: Ursula K. Leguin

Plot: The story is about a werewolf wife who experiences the loss of her husband after he turned into a human. The story started out by sharing how they meet and what life was like at the beginning of their relationship. It later moves on to talk about when she started to notice the changes in her husband and ends with what lead to his death.

Characters: The main character of the story was the husband and the wife. The wife seems calm and was in love and because of that, it was hard for her to see the truth about her husband. The husband just seems like a caring family man but was confused about all the changes that were happening.

Point of View: The author uses her own POV to tell the story.

Setting & Context: The setting is atmospheric and effective. In the opening chapter, it was them meeting in the woods, then the author moved on to set the tone of a relaxing night when he talked about the husband singing coming up through the trees and “the moonlight, summer nights, the full moon shining”. Thought out the story the settings changed with every event that was taking place.

Voice & Style:  The author was clear and very descriptive and was easy to follow. I like how detailed the story was with enough information, so the readers are not left with unanswered questions.

I like the twist of the story. At first, I thought it was a human turning into a werewolf but after the first three paragraphs, that’s when I realize it was not. Great twist!

Dialogue: The author used dialogue throughout the story to introduce other characters such as the daughter who was scared of her dad, and dialogue of the sister as well. which I think was a great way to make the story more conversational.

QUESTION: Since he got his human genes from his dad, do you think any of the children inherited those genes as well?