everett Weedin jr

umm, your characters exist and live in your writing, no? and when one recalls the fundamental meaning of "just" ("just my writing"), well...I am very grateful to you for writing this story

Part of your story's fine craftsmanship is your uniting of the landscapes and cityscapes: "Atrani, it seemed, was a densely packed forest of tall, angular houses that bristled out...." "Gianni's first impression of Amalfi itself was of a forest of parasols." Your advancing of the relationship between Gianni and Angelo is similarly managed by making its narrative details occupying to the reader in the present while glancing ahead (and back): Angelo helping Gianni balance on the skateboard, for instance--a quiet reminder of his getting Gianni down from the high-perched wall. Such details of construction resonate quietly and effectively.

This story is a hard sort to write and a rare pleasure to read. Quotidian and mundane chronicle relies not upon the sensational, startling, and bizarre, but upon the author's detailed, responsive, and empathetic depiction of ordinary human life. The gothic novel and movie is far easier to produce than an attentive evocation of quietly important human events, thoughts, and emotions. Your attentive and sensuous portrait of hours filled by daily actions is a thorough delight. I hope that, though a lot of work, it was a pleasure for you to write. Perhaps you have already read Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs? I think that you would enjoy it.

I am enjoying your story very much. Your descriptions of his surroundings--from the dusty, crowded, noisy urban ones to the jumbled, verdant town in which his grandparents live, and the many vistas of the valley and the sea--are beautifully detailed. I look forward to learning the life that he will lead in Italy, and discovering more of the past and present lives of his parents and grandparents.

It is a pleasure to be reading another story by you so soon after your posting of Between the Shadow and the Soul. The first day of kindergarten and the ensuing week arriving at Jace's overnight in Brody's home is thoroughly satisfying, The exchange between Brody and his parents about the advisability of Jace spending the night (especially the back-and-.forth of "Of course we're sure." "Sure of what?" "What?" "That's what I was asking.") is as skillfully composed a cat's cradle as Abbott and Costello performing "Who's on First?", but touchingly weighted with the family's loving and caring teasing. It's wonderful. I admire many details of your imagining. At one point in Chapter 28 of "Between" Greg speaks a monosyllable to Keigan: "It came out on a breath, like a word-flavored sigh." In the following chapter, when Greg locates Kyle leaning up against the house that he and his family are moving from to Florida, "Everything he wore was dark, blue or black from the look of it, and he was no more obvious than air." Umph!

Oh, it's engaging, as exquisite tension can be. The crafted shaping, particularly the rhetorical forms, provide some comforting reminders to this reader that these figures are characters, not friends who live down the street or consult with Uncle Farid. I'm thinking of such a paragraph as the one with the anaphora of "Feelings". "whirled around" indeed.

A few chapters ago Greg felt, suddenly and unexpectedly in the narrative context, "hopeful". This chapter has prompted me to realize that, with the singular and horrific exception of Nate's father, all your characters, including even such a minor one as Keigan's mother, are intelligent. The fact, then, that none of them can credibly run amok, gives me hope. An additional piece of comforting evidence, to me, Is a piece of Greg's inner voice while he is talking with Keigan: "Goodness gracious, was that peevish noise my voice? Egads!". Any character who can step away from himself and hear himself with such ironically bemused judgment reassures his reader.

One of the pleasures of rereading is foreknowledge acquired in earlier readings. I smiled in a wry way this time when reading the introduction between Noah and Jordan. ("Buckle your seatbelts; it's going to be a....")

What a beautifully heartening chapter, in large part because of your telling details: the small chicken roasted by Andrew and the potatoes mashed by Ian for their Thanksgiving; Andrew, Ian, and Andrew's mother lined up in the perfectly sensible order for the washing, drying, and putting away of the dishes used for Ian's first dinner at Andrew's; and the exchange of loving and thoughtful Christmas gifts. What you choose to include in your story and your quiet (I keep coming back to that word) and measured proffering of the words and actions to the reader is deeply touching.

Of all the finely and aptly telling words in this chapter, their epicenter is, I think, "precious". I clicked on "love" as a response in the sense that I have loved fitting performances of "King Lear".

This fine story is one that I look forward to rereading and rereading. Thank you for making all that reading possible.

In his resolute (even when struggling and uncertain) effort to make the best independent life that he can, Ian is entirely admirable and lovable. And Andrew's discreet and loving actions to help Ian achieve that life make him as admirable and lovable. They are a fine couple, and a pleasure to read.

The words "after the characters have already developed into people who'd do no such thing" interest keenly. A room inhabited by characters and people would be an intriguing, even unsettling, room to enter.

As I mentioned a few chapters back, I am rereading your novel. Because I'm rationing this second reading to only one or two chapters a day, I've just now arrived at this chapter. I "loved" it the first time, and now in this reading, for the last few chapters, I am noticing and paying particular attention to your development of the growing regard between Amara and Drew. Anticipating as I now can do the wonderfully complex love between Amara, Aria, and Drew that you will write after the kidnapping, I look forward to heeding that love (and other aspects of your story) as you create it. This is a thoroughly crafted and affecting story.

Well, since you ask us readers (as did Dickens, on occasion; you're in talented company), I wouldn't believe Noah's mother accepting him. For some people, I think, hating is a drug of choice. You have written so persuasively the mean-spirited, dusty-hearted, arrogant hatred that Noah's mother feels for him and anyone gay that she seems to me irrevocably immured by herself. But Noah's expressed wish that his father and the rest of the family get to enjoy each other's company and affection while the children grow up sounds like one that the author of NoJo would plausibly grant. And if there is room for some subplots' likely future to be included in the Epilogue, I make a plea for Adrien's to be one of them.. He is a wholly admirable character in his friendship for Jordan and his ready and warm acceptance of Noah as his own friend. You have him even play a thoughtful and caring role in NoJo's reconciliation. Yay, Adrien!