I recently read a novel which, because I like only to say kind things of authors, I shall not name. Suffice it to say that the author had written two successful novels before and I hoped for a mood to match the season in this one. It was a ghost story, so I thought I was definitely on track. It was set in a different historical period, but that's fine by me. Past ghosts are just as troubling as present ghosts. The story, however, couldn't ever strike a mood. The setting was in a time of an epidemic. As well as war. But the optimism—can I even call it that?—of the narrator seemed not to allow for what Edgar Allan Poe once said was essential for stories: the "single effect." It was a story scattered all over the place. Perhaps most jarring to me was the use of language that seemed inappropriate to the time setting of the story. Phrases that seemed modern, or lighthearted, sprang up in awkward places....
Blog of a struggling writer.