When it comes to short stories like this, the flaws of writers shine through more easily because there is less content to pad out the weaknesses. However… the inverse is also true. If a writer hits their stride in a short story, it shines brighter than any novel can compare with. To pull this off, Jones does a sneaky little trick.
The pacing of this story is set incredibly well by not overusing description, but pacing alone can’t make a good story. Jones creates little plots throughout this story by planting seeds of information that the reader can get hooked onto. The one I got hooked by was the line “When I say the word in fun to one of my sisters, my mother slaps me across the mouth and the word is lost for years and years”. Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I expected this to be a story of abuse, and I followed along to see how this would be told. But it wasn’t.
That’s how a good story is made. You can hook someone onto a character, such as the mother, and show how they change from the reader’s own biases. The writer didn’t say “My mother abused me”, but I tinted the story that way, expecting some explanation on what the word actually was. By the end, my expectations were subverted and the story was better for it. Using bait like this is a way to have more “story” per sentence. The story wouldn’t be too different if it were missing that sentence, but it loses nuance.
However, I still have one question.
What was that word?
I agree, the pacing of the story was very good because we were told just enough details to get an understanding of the story and context without it seeming like the story was being dragged out. It was easy to get hooked to this story.
This story shows Single mothers who struggle with raising their kids and how it can affect their memory. I think we will saw the tinted memory from the little girl but not the mother. This story is good, and at first, I only saw the little’s pain, but I didn’t think of how the mother must felt when she’s asking for help to read.