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I know, you're like, "An English teacher? Must be an all right read." Well, you are right that the spelling and punctuation is better than most of the crap I read, but just because you have subject-verb agreement doesn't mean you know what the fuck a plot is, apparently. Here's a description:
"To any passerby, this sleepy town is one of many. Nestled in a quiet place with a quiet name, it's a flash in a huge forest of flickering light. When a young girl moves there amidst a circumstance of ghosts and curses, she attempts to find normalcy in a very obscure world. Instead, she will discover that maybe she fits in after all."
I'll let you guess. Just take a minute and try to figure out what that means. Try it out, predict what you think the ending might be and write it down. I'll wait.
If you're like me you wrote something like, "It turns out SHE'S the dead one," or some other cliche bullshit. Well, let me tell you, that shitty and overdone ending would have been WAY better than the actual story. "Is it a horror story?" you ask. No. It isn't. "Then why does the description make it sound like it's spooky?" Because you are trying to make sense out of nonsense. You are seeing shapes in the clouds. You are on acid and all of your synapses are firing at once and your brain is telling you there are faces in the wood grain. Because this story makes NO_FUCKING_SENSE.
Sorry to spoil it, but oh wait, you can't spoil NOTHING. You think I'm exaggerating. You think I'm going to tell you the plot now and it will be at least half a story. IT ISN'T. There is no reason to read this. You might as well look at a random collection of letters for TEN GODDAMN PAGEAAAGHWKJhekwhekw!
Sorry. Alright, I'll summarize it as best I can. From what I glean from the description the narrator moves to a new town (yeah, it's not so apparent just reading it). She moves into her grandparents house (that part I read all by myself!) because they died of a double heart attack while reading (seriously this is in here for some reason, and P.S. it never comes up again and has absolutely no significance to the story) Irish Faerie Almanac and it's suspected some Irish faerie took them to the afterlife or something. Okay, I know, you're like, "I follow," but seriously I am helping you a lot right now. After that a year passes. It rains a lot. Summer comes and they miss the rain a little. The end. Really. No, no, I'm not fucking with you, that's it.
I'm not kidding. No conflict, just a weird like personal essay that had every indication of going paranormal and it just ends. It's like a month-by-month account of random pictures—seriously, like if I just showed you my year in images and it was like a mailbox, then some trees, then a cat, and a tire swing. No, actually, that probably makes more sense than this story.
My theory is that this is some sort of free-form poem that just got out of hand so she labelled it as a short story. Fuck, I can't even explain how insane this shit is, just look for yourself:
"Halloween was the first time I ever stopped to look around. All the moments before that were filled with unpacked moving boxes, thoughts of thoughts of what to wear to school and the obsession with the avoidance of an ever-present drizzle of rain. So I got on with life once the moving boxes had been buried at the dump and I realized the rain was just a few hydrogen atoms and some oxygen mixed together. I can remember that one shining moment that we all look back on for inspiration while we sit on our toilets and feel depressed. I had eaten breakfast on a regular Saturday and went to get the mail from our tin box on the other side of the road. As I stepped across the gravel street, I heard a rooster crowing." Paragraph complete!
The first time I read that I was like, "Huh!?" Now that I've written it down here I get it, and despite every indication, it is actually one continuous thread. She is simply trying to jam some artsy shit into each and every sentence. To the point where it comes out like, "Halloween boxes on the toilet. Then there was a rooster!" Yeeeees. I like roosters too. Tell me more. (By the way, if you did follow, this huge moment she is talking about is just like looking at a house she never noticed before. WTF!?)
Ratings:
Hipster Use of Feminist-Inspired "Shocking" Language: 5 out of 5. Well, it wasn't all feminist-inspired, but at one point she was like, "At the time when I was just barely learning to spell 'uterus...'" I get what you're saying, but only because I am also a hipster, and that just makes me understand you are trying too hard to sound cool. Instead of thinking some "Are You There God?" reference shit, I'm like, "You specifically remember when you were learning to spell uterus?" Que comments about how I'm an insensitive prick.
Choice of Title: 1 out of 5. When I saw this story I got stuck on trying to figure out the title for much longer than I'm proud of. Finally it's revealed that every winter they put up that sign, even though it never really snows, it just rains some more... Heh.
Knowing What a Story Is: 0 out of 5. No conflict? No characters? No dialogue? Nothing happens... at all? Time passes, in chronological order. That is the only connection the end has to the beginning. Fail.
Overall: 0 out of 5. That's right. I hope your students at least learn from you by realizing what not to do, because this is it. I almost put "N/A" because I can't give a rating to something that just isn't even a story. And this "story" is the promotion for her book. I just imagine 50,000 words of shitty, hipster, too much pot, fucking coffeehouse beatnik-would-spit-on-you-for-it "poetry".
If you want to read something before anyone else even heard of it, check out amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall
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