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peter rietbergen

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Everything posted by peter rietbergen

  1. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 19

    I'm definitely not an expert, but in my country the consensus is, that Zoloft is, in the longer run, addictive and, besides, that it definitely is not the best medicine to use for young adults...
  2. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 11

    The exchange between the captain and his wife truly is a monument to conjugal life, and love. Moving indeed.
  3. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 1

    It is both a splendid example of poised narrative skill and, at the same time, wonderfully emotional. Quite a feat.
  4. Call me stupid, by I can live with this "happy end", without a steamy sex scene...
  5. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 15

    An exciting chapter. And a very effective cliff-hanger....
  6. Very well done. Light-hearted and yet emotionally convincing!
  7. Interesting. I, too, would, perhaps, have come to terms with the actual act, but not with the sense of betrayal. It might forever have impaired my potential to trust in a friend....
  8. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 7

    Obviously, or so I feel, the compromise is already embedded in the prologue, when Pitt's bell rings, two years after he has retired, and Blake turns up. It will be a real treat to follow them to that moment.
  9. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 7

  10. A well-written, thoughtful and thought-provoking tale of the way(s) one single moment can, indeed, define a person's perspective of himself and the world around him for the rest of his life.
  11. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 7

    Actually, I do not know if, so many decades later, Oscar Wilde initially also tried so hard to not succumb to the love society wanted to deny him. In the end he did speak its name. It cost him dearly. And, I've always thought, for a rather worthless young man. Many more decades had to pass before men like Pitt and Blake could be what they wanted to be. So... Are these two doomed, in 1809? Or will the author find an end to their story that fits the realities of those times? I'll be glad to read the answer to that question - realising it will be no mean feat if (or rather, I hope: when) he does give it to us..
  12. Though i cannot even begin to feel what S has gone through, you make me "understand" it, not (only) in a "rational " but in an emotional way. You really are a writer!
  13. That interpretation crossed by mind. And it would have been a rather wonderful narrative strategem. But then S's mother would have to be part of that other universe as well ...
  14. Perfect.
  15. Heart-rending. Powerful. And, besides and beyond: so incredibly well-written.
  16. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 6

    Obviously, I do not want to sound like a lecturer, but... Of course people in the Georgian age, and long before, knew about homosexuality. Of course there were male brothels. Of course men, especially in the Army and in the Navy, indulged in homosexual acts. But this would never have been discussed, certainly not in "polite society". And most certainly not between parents and children. And most, most certainly not between a mother and her adult son. And most, most, most certainly not as if she were aware - as J's mother seems to be - of a son's tendency/longing to go beyond homosexual acts into the realm of a 'gay identity' - a concept that, really, did not yet exist.
  17. Call me a sentimental (old) fool, but I'm loving it. Though I do not normally vent my opinions about the way(s) a story unfolds, I yet wonder if the Jacob-in-the-attic set-up is entirely prudential...Then again: the author plans the story, and always has the last wordt.
  18. To be honest: I feel the story would have been more convincing without the end, without the perspective of sex between Mark and the narrator...
  19. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 6

    Rereading the mother's letter, I wonder if she is not almost too wisea to be true, also because, in those times, the parent-child relation may not have been as "open" as this text suggests. That said, Vane's letter, confession, was entirely convincing. This continues to be a wonderfully rewarding story, that deserves to be a printed novel, too.
  20. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 10

    Well done, especially the last part, describing the meeting with the new love interest: good dialogue
  21. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 5

    The sentiments as well as principles expressed in the exchange of letters are equally - if not more - urgent nowadays, with so many organisations/institutions - public and private - increasingly functioning without them.
  22. peter rietbergen

    Chapter 1

    Good start of the game.
  23. A potentially interesting story. But is it convincing? To put it otherwise: is T emotionally adult enough or too stupid to realize that one glance at a handsome man may not be the basis of a new life - one that is emotionally satisfying?
  24. Interesting. I only now realise I, too, grew up with a mother who used to burst - haphazardly often - into quotes from poems I obviously didn't know, and hummed all kinds of unfamiliar melodies. Unwittingly, she turned me into a boy/man of "...songs and snatches" that only much later became recognisable as haling ik from Schubert or Schuman, or from Dutch poets whose very names are now lost.
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